Managing Leaves of Absence
Harvard and the FAS is committed to supporting employees' personal and professional lives, which may include an employee taking a leave of absence to address and heal from health challenges or changes. As a manager, your role is crucial in helping employees navigate their transitions away from and return to work. Your HR Consultant is always available to meet with you to sensitively and effectively prepare for and approach these challenges and transitions.
An employee's plans for taking a leave call on a manager's planning skills. Advance consideration of how you will cover the employee's job responsibilities during their leave, along with sensitivity to the personal challenges or changes they may be facing, will pay dividends in your whole work group's productivity, morale, and retention.
Whenever one of your staff members will be taking a family or medical leave, please notify the FAS Leaves Office at leaves@fas.harvard.edu or 617-496-2553 as early as possible for assistance.
While the process of considering, approving, and managing an employee's leave involves documentation and adherence to rules, it is important to always bear in mind your employee's personal challenges and feelings, and communicate with them with sensitivity and compassion. Your willingness to help staff balance work and personal issues—and your kindness throughout these encounters—can lead to greater employee loyalty, morale, and retention that may extend to the affected employee's co-workers as well.
Harvard offers paid family and medical leave under Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave (MAPFML) to employees to cover many of life’s challenges. Most of these situations involve strong emotions, whether joy at a baby’s arrival or fear and stress at news of a medical issue. As a manager, you will face situations that may begin with announcements such as these:
- “My father is sick and I’m his caretaker, I may need to reduce my hours.”
- “My sister was in an accident; I may need to use PTO.”
- “I twisted my ankle while walking to campus.”
- “I think I might have long covid.”
- “My child needs speech therapy so I will need to take Wednesday afternoons off.”
- “I’m having a hard time focusing on work and have felt really withdrawn and sad lately.”
- “I get really bad migraines sometimes so that’s why I’ve called out sick.”
- “I’ll need to request a 4th sick day because I’m still not feeling well.”
- "I’m expecting a baby."
- "My wife has cancer."
- "My son's unit has been deployed."
- "My mother needs surgery."
- "I need to go overseas to adopt my baby."
- "I will need to go to physical therapy for six weeks."
- “Joe said he’s having surgery next month.”
When your employee advises that they may need time off of work (either intermittent time off or if they plan to be out for more than three consecutive work days) due to family or medical reasons like the examples above, please connect them with the Leaves Office leaves@fas.harvard.edu for assistance. The Leaves Office will then connect with the employee to see what type of family or medical leave would be appropriate and will share information about their leave benefits. They will also share information about how the employee can contact Harvard’s leave administrator, Lincoln Financial, to request their leave.
- Planning for Your Employee’s Medical Leave. Thoughtful planning and discussion before a medical leave will pave the way for smooth transitions for all involved.
- Leaves Preparation Checklist. Managers and department administrators can use this document to help prepare their department for a leave.
- Workers’ Compensation. What to do when an employee experiences a work-related illness or injury.
- Manager Checklist for Employee Family and Medical Leaves, which details the suggested steps to take when an employee goes on leave.
- Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave (MA PFML) FAQs, which provides answers to many frequently asked questions on MA PFML.
Leave of Absence Process
Step 1.
Manager, Department Administrator, or HR Consultant refers employee to the Leaves Office.
Step 2.
The Leaves Office determines appropriate leave type and provides information and instructions for initiating leave with Lincoln Financial.
Step 3.
Employee initiates leave with Lincoln Financial and notifies manager/department of planned time out of work when possible
Step 4.
Lincoln Financial approves the leave and notifies the Leaves Office.
Step 5.
The Leaves Office notifies the employee, the manager, the Department Administrator, and the HR Consultant of the approval.
Step 6.
(For continuous medical leaves only)
The Leaves Office tracks the leave and coordinates the employee’s return to work once the complete Return to Work form is received.