The environment for managing employee leave has become increasingly complicated—and potentially costly—to associations that are not in compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the growing number of leave laws and regulations throughout the country.

However, there are many resources available to help guide you through the ever-changing leave landscape.

For example, the Department of Labor published an Employer’s Guide to the FMLA, which provides essential information about the law, including employers’ obligations under it and the options available to them in administering leave.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has published a similar enforcement guide for the ADA: Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

While these publications offer legal guidance, employers can also follow several best practices that help to ensure compliance for associations.

Training is critical. Managers and supervisors must understand the leave process, carry out their responsibilities under the law, and uniformly administer company policies. But do not expect them to be the experts. Be sure they have a firm grasp on how an employee might invoke their rights under the FMLA or ADA, and what the process is once they do.

Human resources must be knowledgeable and qualified. Appropriate HR and leave administrators need to be up to date on all leave laws and regulations and be prepared to answer employees’ questions about their rights surrounding leave and job protections. This holds true whether a program is managed internally or externally. Don’t expect to be let off the hook if a compliance issue arises, even if you outsource your programs to a vendor.

Collaboration across business units is key. Leave programs cross organizational boundaries. HR, benefits, legal, and payroll departments, to name a few, need to work collaboratively to ensure your association is effectively and compliantly managing leaves of absence. Removing barriers between departments creates efficiencies and limits liability. One area that is commonly overlooked is risk management, or worker’s compensation. When an employee is injured on the job and loses time from work or suffers a disability, FMLA and ADA rights are often ignored because workers’ compensation has its own regulatory body. These three laws need to be considered together when managing an employee’s injury, which highlights how important collaboration is in the leave management process.

Appropriate HR and leave administrators need to be up to date on all leave laws and regulations and be prepared to answer employees’ questions about their rights for leave and job protections.

Implement clear and consistent processes and policies. FMLA and ADA policies should be uniform and applied as consistently as possible across the association regardless of size or geography, while still allowing for some flexibility. Stakeholders need to engage in consistent correspondence, tracking, management, decision making, and communication. As an example, if you have a policy that only returns employees to a light-duty or modified position when they have suffered an on-the-job injury, this could potentially be a violation under both the FMLA and the ADA.

Centralize administration of the leave function. While compliance should be addressed across business units, employees and managers should have one source to go to for questions and answers regarding leave. Using centralized administration is good for everyone in the organization. Consistent communication and action are key to staying compliant.

Evaluate how your program is managed. Take inventory of the systems used, how time is tracked, and how absences are handled. If your organization has an internal system to manage or track its absences, it should be regularly evaluated for effectiveness. If you choose a software system to manage leaves, ensure that your vendor has ongoing compliance and legal support. Outsource your leave management functions to a vendor if necessary. In fact, outsourcing of leave programs has increased over the last three years, according to the annual DMEC Employer Leave Management Survey [PDF], but it doesn’t fit every culture or organization. Choose what works best for your association.

Just because an organization outsources leave management, it does not mean it outsources its legal responsibilities. And even when outsourcing, an association must establish a process to update its leave programs to meet its changing business and staff needs.

Leave laws not only create risk, but they also create opportunity. If planned and implemented in a thoughtful and strategic way, effective leave management programs can be a competitive advantage in the battle for the best talent. Take advantage of the resources that are available and become educated on both the risks and opportunities offered by the new world of employee leave programs.