Leave Is the Stress Test for Your HR Stack: Navigating Leave Compliance from Federal Mandates to County Laws

[00:00:00] Don't view Leave as a compliance metric. It includes that, but it isn't that. It probably, in many ways, could be one of the greatest testimonies of your staff for your culture when you ask them about what life is like here at this company. WorkTech Podcast

[00:00:29] All right. Welcome back to WorkTech. We have a special edition of WorkTech. We've launched a new report, a Market Windows report. It's about Leave. And I'm just, I'm going to jump right in with our guest, John Baldino, CEO, founder of Humorizo. Leave is the stress test for your HR tech stack. John, what do you think of that?

[00:01:00] Hey, George. I think it's well said. The reality for most technology that sometimes we can forget is that people have to use it. So if you have something as sensitive as Leave, which it is for many people, even in the good news, right, when you're talking about maybe having a baby or something, like, you still have to feel like, I can get what I need, right?

[00:01:25] From the technology access that I'll have personnel around me, should there be anything that I need to understand better or understand at all, as in my rights or access to particular support areas. And can it all just talk to each other and help me not to have to worry about this for the next X amount of days, weeks, months? Yeah.

[00:01:49] I think if you have a tech stack that can be thoughtful of all of those facets, both internal and external to the stakeholders, seems pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So that, you know, we're always trying new things here. That's my, that's my attempt at a cold open, but let's, let's tell everybody about you and the company and let's, let's do an introduction.

[00:02:12] Awesome. Yep. Again, I'm John Baldino. I have had the privilege of running Humoriso for the past 14 plus years already. And so in, in the startup world, which we're not a startup anymore, but in the startup world of, of putting an organization like this together and becoming a global HR consulting firm, our support services really sit in the tactical, technological and transformative HR body of work.

[00:02:40] Um, and as you probably know better than I do, uh, the ways in which those, uh, areas of discipline exist these days often overlap greatly because of a unified experience that our staff are looking for that employees desire within their organizations to have to make 15 phone calls for one thing. Not as popular, never was really, but now we have other options.

[00:03:06] And so for Humoriso, we really try to sit in support of those organizations, trying to streamline those things, support them in some outsourcing components of that as well. Um, and it's been, it's been a great time. Yeah. And you're, you've, you've built tech around this, uh, you know, this issue around several areas within the employee life cycle, but we're focused on leave today. And, um, tell us about that. What, what, what led you to that?

[00:03:36] Yeah. It's, um, it's, um, it's probably, um, one, one of the most, for sure, difficult things that we've done because leave itself is highly personal, um, highly regulated, um, and often an area of extreme need within a very competent HR department, let's say within your organization.

[00:03:59] And there's never a question, um, often that the individuals involved are unaware of what leave is. It's just the, the manner with which it has to be rolled out, followed up on proven held to a level of compliance. Um, and so building technology to address all of those areas. I mean, even saying it out loud, it actually still kind of scares me a little bit. It's kind of daunting, right? To do all of that. Um, but that, that really was something where I saw

[00:04:29] most of what was happening in our HR tech world where they were providing this kind of consideration to leave was heavily technological, very little consultative. And so here's a platform, go ahead and run with it. Um, and I found it really needed to be both end, both the human touch, consultate, consultative consideration,

[00:04:54] not only for the organization, not only for the organization, but for the individual person, as well as having a tech platform that provides transparency for everybody. We can see where everything is, where the responses are in, where they're still being, um, waited for, um, often doctors, things like that. I think that transparency level is very helpful for, for people to feel that what they're hearing in consultation matches what their experiences in technology.

[00:05:20] Yeah. And that, um, I mean, you really pull it all together there, but that compliance aspect, um, it's, it's a high compliance area. I mean, it's federal state local ADA, all of those, um, all of those obligations can hit at one time. What, what, what does that look like? I think you have, you have such a purview over so many different industries.

[00:05:50] And types of customers, um, what does that look like when it presents?

[00:06:20] Like it to believe it to be. Um, and so compliance is very cumbersome. Um, a U S example for you, even this week, um, we're down to counties passing legislation about what leave will look like counties within states.

[00:06:39] So Allegheny County in Pennsylvania. So Pittsburgh is part of Allegheny County. They passed a very different, um, leave law for how leave is handled within their county different than the state or the federal level.

[00:06:55] So you have to have both the expertise on the consultative side and the adeptness within your technology to know what's supposed to run consecutive, what's supposed to run concurrent, which thing comes first.

[00:07:11] What's the timeline around that first thing, all of those pieces. Um, obviously me saying it out loud sounds very complex, but you also have to be thoughtful that there's still a human in the midst of it. Right. So you don't want them to be stressed going through all these pieces. Um, it's a lot.

[00:07:28] Right. So is that, I mean, I know outsourcing of FMLA is on the rise, uh, over the last few years, it's up to like 75% or so. Um, it is, is that why is it, is it the, is it the complexity, the effort, the, the stakes?

[00:07:50] Yeah. I think it's all of that. Plus, um, one, um, some of what you see out there in terms of the outsourcing and the, I, I'm very careful with the categories you used FMLA ADA. I'll even throw you Sarah in, which is our federal leave for, for military, right. If you're called up from the reserves, things like that.

[00:08:10] There are organizations that are providing that level of support. And I'm careful to use that language because they're just providing it on the federal level. They're not handling things on the state and local level because it is more complicated to do that. When I have to deal with what's happening in New York city compared to New York, compared to the federal government. It's, it's messy. I think the outsourcing to obviously from our perspective, an entity that can handle all of those things.

[00:08:40] Is of most appeal. The, the other area and most HR people that are internal practitioners will say, listen, I can, I can walk an FMLA line. It's the time it takes to walk it. I'm not going to necessarily say that every piece is complicated, but the back and forth of phone calls, uh, to medical providers, to whatever attestations are needed for the type of leave that's being requested or accommodation that's being requested.

[00:09:08] It just takes time. It just takes time. Follow up phone calls. I'm going to say a word that is, you know, probably not popular these days. Facts. We still have faxes that have to be handled from either medical offices or government entities that you've got to keep. Hey, we didn't get that fax yet. Could you try to send it again? Please. You know, those kinds of things just take time. And so outsourcing that frees those internal practitioners to be a bit more employee relations.

[00:09:37] HR business partner focused on core duties and responsibilities. Yeah. And I think, um, I've heard you say before that many of the regulations require a human, I mean, interaction or intervention, right? With, with the employee. So it's, it's not a fully automated one size fits. You've got to be in the process.

[00:10:02] It's not supposed to be George, right? Like, especially when you're talking about ADA, that, that accommodation requests, they're supposed to be an interactive process. You're supposed to have a conversation. Well, what does it mean for you to need X, Y, and Z? You know, the certification that came through says, A, you're asking for B. So either you got to get this change so that it's B, or you have to live with A because your doctor says it's supposed to be A. We're, we're not making it up. We're not the medical professional. This is what you provided.

[00:10:32] Those kinds of conversations. I think often it's not just about, you know, I gotcha kind of conversations. It's also about tell me what's really going on. Sometimes that's the kind of, you know, what, what is, I'm just stressed at work. And the stress is starting to make me feel sick.

[00:10:48] I want to address why the stress is happening. I can I get you a cushion for your chair? Sure. But, but I, I want to understand better. And so having that consultative approach looping in the HR internal practitioners are experts, the individual employee. It's a much healthier conversation. And when everybody realizes we're rowing towards resolution together.

[00:11:10] Okay. Yeah. And so paint a picture for us of like the, the, the leave request and, you know, we've got the employer, we've got the HR team and we've got the employee and how, how does that generally go? And, and, and I'm curious what the role of the, the leave product and services and in that.

[00:11:38] Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. I'm going to give it in response generally, just like you said, we can obviously be a little customized depending upon workflows within organizations, but generally speaking, we, our platform is super easy to access can really be used and is used by your internal HR team to say, oh, you're, you're looking for accommodation or leave. Visit this site. I just emailed it to you, texted it to you. You can do it from your phone,

[00:12:08] whatever is easiest for you. And you just put in that initial bit of information. It does not require an employee to know the law. Meaning you don't have to know, is this FMLA? Is this ADA? You don't have to know that. You can just pick the thing that you need help with and we're going to know where it goes. We'll take care of that.

[00:12:28] Once that goes in, there's, there's an automation of the paperwork that's got to go out right away because there is a compliance timeline connected to those things and to give an employee the adequate time to review and complete the paperwork.

[00:12:41] Sometimes in HR, we forget people don't fill this out each individual every day. We're used to reading it all every day, but the person who's getting it, this may be the first time in 12 years at an organization they're ever filling out FMLA paperwork, right? So they might need the assistance that they can have both a live chat, phone call, video call. They have access to all of those things to be able to get that help. Once that comes in, we're going to integrate

[00:13:07] it into our system dashboard for the employer to see kind of what's, what's been requested. Generally, we're still needing to protect people's health information. So not everybody needs to know that you've got X, Y, and Z going on just generally what's happening. And then they're able to track that all the way through when the supporting documentation is coming back, when the employer review and agreement, we have clients that say, you guys know what the rules are. Just make sure we're following it.

[00:13:37] Consistently across the board. And we have some clients that are like, I want to review most of those requests. Well, you're able to do that. Log in and review it to your heart's content. And then that's going to move all the way through to either an approval or a denial if it doesn't meet the criteria, or if it kicks from FMLA to ADA, believe it or not, that's supposed to happen.

[00:13:56] And those kinds of things should be very transparent. Our system does that. And then it can integrate, it does into whatever HRIS you're using so that you have that core document management for yourself for years to come. Yeah. And so in that process, the employee is connecting with a third party. How does that change the conversation?

[00:14:24] The one thing is we're not a call center, which I think has made a big difference in our go-to-market strategy even. Because you will know who your leave administrator is all the way through. It doesn't rotate. And so once you get assigned to that initial person, you get to chat with them all the way through. It's really helpful to not have to start your story over and over and over and over again each time you get on the phone if you have questions, those kinds of things.

[00:14:52] Plus, having the employee has access to the dashboard also to kind of see where things are going and what's being waited for. So they don't have to wait on the phone to call to say, where are we? Am I approved yet? No, I can see my doctor has not returned the thing. If you want to make a phone call, call your doctor. Right? Like that sort of thing.

[00:15:11] I like the idea that they're able to have just as much transparency in that regard as the employer, to be honest. It should be equitable across the board. And that's been good feedback that we've gotten from the clients that we support.

[00:15:24] Yeah. It's also, I mean, employees know that their HR, depending on every company is different. I'm speaking generally, as you mentioned. I mean, HR is running performance reviews. They're running terminations. They're looking at salary data. So there's probably a comfort level in having someone who can help, who's not necessarily, you know,

[00:15:53] the HR person who's over all my data. And, and yes, I think for a couple of reasons. One, sometimes there's an uphill battle of trust within an organization. And I'm not saying that the HR team necessarily caused it, but for whatever reason, an employee feels nervous about having their internal HR person knowing things. And so having that third party can really provide a level of insulation to that while being compliant.

[00:16:23] And keeping the company.

[00:16:53] And so having that third party can really, you know, I'm connected to it from multiple levels falling into that category these days that really it used to be okay to have a general knowledge. We need to have some specialization there these days. And it's great. I feel so much better as an internal HR practitioner to know that, you know, so-and-so and so-and-so are handling these cases for us, for our staff. I have confidence in their area of expertise.

[00:17:17] Yeah. That, that, that example that you gave, there were a lot of interconnections, a lot of handoffs there. What, when you think about not an environment with your product, but broadly, where do the, where does the baton get dropped frequently? And what's the, what's the cost of that? What's the potential impact of, of that?

[00:17:42] Yeah. I mean, certainly one of the potential impacts is actually finable offenses, compliance infraction. And we've got cities in particular that are hungry to find those.

[00:17:59] And most of that. And most of that has to do with the documentation that's delivered, when the documentation is delivered, how long that we are giving individuals to handle the documentation, what we do and how long when the documentation is returned. I mean, it's literally down to that kind of day, two days, five days, 10 days. There's all kinds of compliance components. When does it, if you're denied FMLA, there's a timeline before it flips to ADA that we've got to be able to prove that we did that.

[00:18:27] And those pieces can get lost. If you're an internal practitioner trying to manage all the things that you mentioned, I'm running payroll, I'm doing performance reviews. I walked in this morning and I had a phone call of a problem an employee is having, all those things. And then you forget, you know, 10 o'clock at night, you're laying in bed thinking, oh my gosh, I forgot to send out that thing.

[00:18:51] That's the, you know, HR people are kept up at night. And sometimes it has to do with those timeline compliance things that you don't mean to forget, but you just had 50 other things that took over your schedule that day.

[00:19:04] Yeah. Yeah. So given all of this, I'm an HR leader and I'm out evaluating leave vendors. What, what are the questions you think they should be asking? Certainly you want to have a sense of, and I'm not necessarily saying these are in any particular order, but I would say you want to have a sense of how it can integrate with the systems that you currently have.

[00:19:33] Okay. And, and, and because you, you don't want to make it more complicated for you. That's the internal HR practice. You want it to work as best as possible in, in whatever you have to, I think you want to have a sense of, can I, can I test the, the process?

[00:19:51] I'll liken it to like an applicant tracking system, apply for a job, right? We will tell somebody, apply for a job, go through the process, see what it's like, get a firsthand view. I would say you've got to be able to, to go through the whole thing as, as a dummy employee. And if you can let them not know it's you, that's even better. Like try to just test it out. What is that vibe like for you?

[00:20:12] Um, and then I would say the third thing I, I, I would ask about, um, uh, expertise. I think it's important to ask about, um, uh, the individuals that are responding to these calls. I'm not knocking anyone. That's a leave. Let's say coordinator whose primary responsibility is really just receiving what's coming in and putting it in the places where it needs to go. Please don't give people a hard time for that.

[00:20:39] But I'm talking more of those that are on the phone with your employees that are on video with your employees. Where are they coming from? What kind of background do they have? What are the, what's the course of study? Like, how do I make sure that I can have the confidence I need to have? I think it's okay. We, we used to do this with HR generalists, right? Their certifications that kind of ask, ask for proof of concept in the people that are, that are addressing your people.

[00:21:05] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are great. Um, so I, I, in the report, um, I know it says that 100% of the FMLA and ADA cases close with a complete documentation trail. Is that, is that because of diligence or because of your design or?

[00:21:26] Well, both. Uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, I would say the diligence, um, uh, precipitated the need to have our product work the way that it does. Um, we, we've got to close the loop on every single request for leave.

[00:21:47] And I, um, for, even if you don't go with humor, so I'm just going to say that every single request for leave, you've got to have proof of addressing and closing the loop. Even if the answer was no, for whatever compliant reasons you picked it, you've got to show that you followed it all the way through and, and make sure that you really can prove that.

[00:22:09] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, back, back where we started about the stress test, I think this, at this time in the, in our world, there's so much technology being thrown at everything and so much automation and you're bringing new technology to this, but this really is, you really, you have to have a human component.

[00:22:35] Yeah. Um, for the person, you know, it's sometimes it's the most stressful time in their lives, whether it's a good thing or bad thing that's, that's happening or about to happen. And there needs to be some compassion or a listening ear there. Um, and everything that you're saying, it seems like, you know, you've built a platform that dots, the eyes, crosses, the T's, closes, the cases, gives the analytics,

[00:23:03] but also enables that human interaction because you're able to fall back on, on the system. The largest percentage of, uh, leave administration, uh, practitioner that we have actually has a psychology background. Oh, okay. Because, because of that, just what you said. Um, and, and, um, you know, transparently I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, emotional.

[00:23:32] And I will tell you, there are times even in, in my getting involved with things that I've been on the phone with individuals who are going through a thing and, and I will get choked up. With them as they're going through it. And there is something, it's not manufactured. It's very human. And there is something very comforting to the person that I'm talking to, even though it's awful, what they're going through to know.

[00:23:57] So I, I'm not just talking to a screen. It's a human that really has a, uh, a heartbeat behind what it is that I'm going through. I think there's great value in that. Yeah. So one last question. I know, uh, I could talk to you about this stuff all day. Sometimes I do, but what, what's the one thing, uh, an HR leader should take away from this, this conversation, this report, you know, the most important thing.

[00:24:25] Um, don't view leave as a compliance metric. It, it includes that, but it isn't that, um, it probably in many ways could be one of the greatest testimonies of your staff for your culture. Hmm. When you ask them about what it, what life is like here at this company.

[00:24:53] Yeah. All right. Well, uh, the report is out. It's the title is leave is the stress test for your HR stack. I think John, you just, you just proved that in spades in this conversation. Um, so, uh, I want to thank you for taking the time to doing this and we'll have the link to the report and everything in the notes, but John, thank you. Thank you, George. I appreciate it very much.

[00:25:19] All right. And thanks everybody, wherever you're watching or listening out on the work to find network and, uh, until next time. The work tech podcast.