HR Hotline: Does Offering Paid Leave Impact State Benefits?

Q: One of our employees is pregnant and due to give birth in a few months. I understand that she will be eligible for a 12-week leave of absence under Connecticut FMLA, and for partial monetary benefits through the state’s paid family leave program.

As a company, we would like to provide our full-time employees with two weeks of fully paid parental leave, regardless of what they receive from the state. Would this be disallowed as double-dipping? Or is it permissible for our employees to collect benefits from both us and the state at the same time?    

A: It is quite common for employers to have their own paid parental and maternity leave policies, and nothing in Connecticut law prohibits this.

However, you have the right instinct to question how your own policy might impact an employee’s eligibility for benefits administered by the state’s Paid Leave Authority. 

In some cases, it would, in fact, be considered double dipping to collect benefits from an employer and the state, so it’s important to understand how the state benefits work. 

As you noted, your employee will be eligible for both a 12-week leave of absence and 12 weeks of partial benefits from the state’s paid family leave program.

(We’re assuming that she met all eligibility requirements by working for you for at least three months and by contributing sufficient funds to the program via her payroll deductions. More on that here.)

Standard Process

After your employee applies for benefits on the Paid Leave Authority’s website, she will receive Aflac paperwork that you’ll need to complete, in your role as her employer. 

Among other things, that paperwork will ask you (1) whether you’re providing any monetary benefits; and (2) whether those benefits will be primary or secondary. 

You’re asked these questions because Connecticut law caps the monetary benefit at 12 weeks (with one exception, explained below), and an employee may not collect more than 100% of their regular weekly compensation.  

Connecticut law caps the monetary benefit at 12 weeks and an employee may not collect more than 100% of her regular weekly compensation.  

In your case, since you plan to provide two weeks of full pay regardless of what the employee receives from Aflac, those employer-provided benefits will be primary for two weeks and the employee will not receive anything from Aflac.

Since the benefit is statutorily capped at 12 weeks and you paid for two of them, she will receive partial benefits from Aflac for the following 10 weeks. 

If you or your employee fails to disclose your two-week payment and she collects 12 weeks of benefits from Aflac, she will collect more than 100% of her regular income for two weeks, amounting to improper double-dipping. 

Exceptions

As we noted above, there is one exception to the 12-week rule. An employee may be eligible for two additional work weeks of leave (and thus two additional weeks of benefits) if she experiences a serious health condition resulting in incapacitation during her pregnancy. 

If this were to happen to your employee, she could be on a leave of absence for 14 weeks, collect Aflac benefits for 12, and collect employer-provided benefits for two.  

Note that, to be eligible for state-provided benefits, an employee must be absent from work. In the scenario above, the employee can only collect 14 weeks’ worth of benefits if she is in fact absent for all 14 weeks.  

Rather than paying full benefits for any week, many employers opt to make their benefits secondary, rather than primary.

Rather than paying full benefits for any week, many employers opt to make their benefits secondary, rather than primary.

This means that the employee will receive her Aflac benefits first, and the employer simply supplements those benefits up to a maximum of 100% of regular income.

With this strategy, the employee collects Aflac benefits for all 12 weeks, receives an employer-provided supplement for 12 weeks, and there is no double-dipping.  

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HR problems or issues? Email or call CBIA’s Diane Mokriski at the HR Hotline (860.244.1900). The HR Hotline is a free service for CBIA member companies and is intended to provide general information and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult with legal professionals for specific guidance for your situation.