An employee tells you they're going out on leave, and suddenly you're juggling questions that don't have obvious answers. Do they qualify for FMLA? How much time do they get? Does their health insurance keep going? Do they still accrue paid time off while they're out? What happens to their pay? And underneath all of it, the quiet worry that if you track any of this wrong, you're exposed to a complaint or a penalty down the road.
Leave is one of the hardest parts of HR precisely because it sits where law, payroll, and human situations all collide. Someone is having a baby, recovering from surgery, or caring for a sick parent, and you want to handle it with care while also staying on the right side of a stack of rules that vary by employer size and by state. That's a lot to carry.
This is a practical guide to managing leave of absence and FMLA inside ADP Workforce Now. We'll cover the main types of leave, how to track eligibility and duration, how leave touches pay, benefits, and accruals, what documentation to keep, and how to handle the return to work. Rules here are complex and change, so treat this as general guidance and confirm your obligations with a qualified advisor. With that said, this doesn't have to be chaos. We've got you.
"Leave" is a catch-all word that covers very different situations, and lumping them together is where a lot of confusion starts. It helps to sort them into groups.
Federal job-protected leave is the one most people mean when they say FMLA. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act can provide eligible employees of covered employers with job-protected, unpaid time off for certain family and medical reasons, such as a serious health condition, bonding with a new child, or caring for a family member. Whether you're a covered employer and whether an employee is eligible depends on specific tests.
State and local leave is a fast-growing category. Many states have their own family leave, medical leave, paid sick leave, or paid family and medical leave programs, and these can run alongside the federal rules. They vary widely, and some provide wage replacement that the federal law does not.
Then there's employer-provided leave: your own policies for paid time off, vacation, sick time, bereavement, or a personal leave of absence. And there are specialized categories like military-related leave and disability-related accommodations. Each type has its own rules, and getting the type right is the first step, because everything downstream depends on it.
Eligibility is where leave management lives or dies, because applying the wrong rule to the wrong person creates risk in both directions. Deny leave to someone who qualified, and you have a compliance problem. Grant protected leave to someone who didn't, and you've set a precedent and possibly miscounted your obligations.
For federal FMLA, eligibility generally turns on factors like how long the employee has worked for you, how many hours they've worked over the prior year, and whether your organization meets the size and coverage thresholds at that worksite. State programs have their own eligibility rules, which may be broader or narrower. The exact tests and thresholds are set by law and can change, so confirm the current requirements with your advisor rather than working from memory.
Inside ADP Workforce Now, the value comes from having the underlying data clean and in one place: hire dates, hours worked, worksite location, and employment status all feed the eligibility picture. When that information is accurate and current, determining whether someone likely qualifies is far faster and more defensible than digging through spreadsheets and paper files. The system helps you apply your rules consistently, which is exactly what you want if a determination is ever questioned.
Once leave starts, the clock matters. Protected leave typically comes with a maximum amount of time within a defined period, and you need to track how much an employee has used and how much remains. This sounds simple until leave gets taken in pieces.
Intermittent leave is the tricky part. An employee might take protected leave a few hours or a day at a time for ongoing treatment, rather than in one continuous block. Now you're tracking time in small increments against a running total, and doing it by hand invites errors. A missed entry here, a double count there, and your remaining-balance number is wrong, which can lead to either cutting someone's leave short or extending it past what applies.
This is where tracking leave in ADP Workforce Now earns its keep. Recording leave against the right category and keeping a running total takes the guesswork out of duration, and consistent, dated records give you a clear history if anyone ever asks how you arrived at a balance. The goal is simple: always be able to answer "how much leave does this person have left" without a scramble.
Pay during leave trips up a lot of teams because the answer is "it depends," and it depends on several things at once. Federal FMLA leave is unpaid on its own, but that rarely tells the whole story. Employees often use their accrued paid time off during leave, and many states now run paid programs that provide some wage replacement.
So a single leave can have layers. An employee might receive state paid-family-leave benefits for part of it, run their accrued PTO alongside that, and have some stretch that is fully unpaid. Your policy and applicable law determine how those layers stack and how any wage replacement coordinates. Getting the payroll entries right for each period takes attention, because the mix can change week to week.
In ADP Workforce Now, the point is to make sure each pay period during leave reflects reality: the right hours, the right pay codes, the right treatment of any PTO used. When that's set up carefully, the employee gets what they're owed and your records match what actually happened. The rules for wage replacement vary by state and change, so confirm the specifics with your advisor.
Two questions come up in almost every leave: does health insurance continue, and does the employee keep earning PTO while they're out?
On benefits, protected leave often comes with an obligation to maintain group health coverage on the same terms as if the employee were still working, which means you need a plan for how their share of premiums gets paid while they're not receiving a normal paycheck. If that isn't handled, you can end up with missed premiums and a coverage mess to untangle later. Tracking benefit continuation and premium collection carefully during leave prevents that.
On accruals, whether an employee keeps earning PTO while on leave usually depends on your policy and, in some cases, applicable law. Some employers pause accruals during unpaid leave; others continue them. What matters is that your practice is consistent, documented, and correctly reflected in ADP Workforce Now so the employee's balances are right when they return. Benefit-continuation obligations are governed by law and plan terms, so confirm yours with your advisor and plan documents.
Good leave documentation isn't bureaucracy for its own sake. It protects the employee's rights and your organization at the same time. If a determination is ever questioned, your records are the story of what happened and why.
Keep the key pieces: the employee's request and the reason category, any required notices you provided, medical certification where appropriate, your eligibility determination, and a running record of leave used. Handle any medical information with care and keep it confidential and separate from the general personnel file. Dated, consistent records are your best friend if a claim or audit ever comes up. Sloppy or missing documentation is where good-faith employers get into avoidable trouble.
Leave doesn't end when the employee walks back in the door; it ends when the return is handled cleanly. Protected leave often carries a right to return to the same or an equivalent position, so restoring the employee correctly matters.
Update their status in ADP Workforce Now promptly so pay, benefits, and accruals resume the way they should. Confirm any change to schedule or hours, and make sure the return date is recorded against the leave so the balances close out correctly. A clean return means the employee's first paycheck back is right and nothing lingers unresolved. Hair on fire because someone came back last week and payroll still has them out? That's the kind of loose end we tie off fast.
A client with around eighty employees called us when a team member requested time off to care for a family member with a serious health condition. The employee wanted to take some of the leave in continuous weeks and some intermittently, a few days at a time, over the following months. The HR lead was worried about tracking it all correctly.
Working alongside the client's employment advisor on the eligibility determination, we set the leave up cleanly in ADP Workforce Now. We recorded the continuous block, created a consistent way to log the intermittent days against the same protected category, and kept a running total so the remaining balance was always visible. We mapped out how the employee's accrued PTO would be used and made sure the plan for continuing health coverage was clear before the first missed paycheck.
The numbers are rounded and illustrative, but the outcome is the point. Over several months of intermittent leave, the client always knew exactly how much protected time remained, the employee's pay and benefits stayed correct, and when the return-to-work date came, the transition back was a quick status update rather than a cleanup project.
"Does FMLA leave have to be paid?"
Federal FMLA leave is generally unpaid on its own, but that's rarely the full picture. Employees often use accrued PTO during the leave, and a growing number of states run paid family and medical leave programs that provide wage replacement. How those pieces coordinate depends on your policy and applicable state law, so confirm the specifics with your advisor.
"Can an employee take FMLA a few hours at a time?"
In many cases, yes. Protected leave can sometimes be taken intermittently or on a reduced schedule for qualifying reasons, such as ongoing medical treatment. That makes accurate tracking essential, because you're counting small increments against a running total. Recording each block consistently in ADP Workforce Now keeps the balance right and defensible.
"Do we have to keep paying for health insurance while someone is on leave?"
Protected leave often requires maintaining group health coverage on the same terms as active employment, which means planning for how the employee's premium share gets paid during the leave. The exact obligations depend on the type of leave, applicable law, and your plan terms, so confirm yours before the leave starts.
The teams that handle leave calmly built their process before they needed it. They keep employee data clean in ADP Workforce Now so eligibility questions are quick to answer. They have a written policy that spells out how PTO interacts with protected leave, whether accruals continue, and how benefit premiums get collected. They know which state programs apply to their people.
They also track leave consistently, in one place, with dated records, and lean on qualified advisors for the hard determinations instead of guessing. Done that way, each new leave request is a known process, not a fresh emergency.
We're former ADP service professionals, and we work with ADP exclusively. When a complicated leave situation lands on your desk, you're not filing a ticket and waiting in a queue or listening to hold music. You reach a dedicated consultant who knows ADP Workforce Now and understands how leave, pay, and benefits fit together. No tickets, no hold queues.
Facing a leave request and not sure where to start? REQUEST A CONSULTATION (ignitehcm.com/solutions/compliance).
ADP and the ADP logo are registered trademarks of ADP, Inc. This article is general guidance only and not legal, tax, or benefits advice. FMLA, state leave laws, and benefit-continuation rules are complex and change over time. Confirm your specific obligations with your licensed employment counsel or advisor and your plan documents.
