While you are on leave
Your leave is protected, but you still have rights and obligations. Know what your employer can and cannot do while you are out.
Your job is protected, not just your employment
When you return, you must be restored to the same position or a virtually identical one with equivalent pay, benefits, hours, and working conditions. A demotion or a "similar but different" role is an FMLA violation unless your employer can prove it would have happened anyway (for example, a genuine layoff).
Health insurance continues
Your employer must maintain your group health coverage on the same terms as if you were still working. You are still responsible for your share of premiums. If your leave is unpaid, they must tell you how to pay your share; failing to pay can cancel your coverage.
Intermittent leave: track every hour
If you are using intermittent FMLA, keep your own log of every absence, even partial-day absences. Employers routinely miscount intermittent FMLA, and your log is the only record you control.
What your employer cannot do
They cannot require you to use more leave than medically necessary. They cannot require you to check in during periods of incapacity. They cannot ask your provider to change the certification. They cannot require a second opinion unless they have reason to doubt the first and they pay for it.
Do these before moving on
- 1
Start a spreadsheet of every intermittent absence
Date, start time, end time, reason ("therapy" / "symptom flare"). One row per incident.
- 2
Pay your share of the premium if your leave is unpaid
Missed payment is the #1 way FMLA coverage gets silently dropped.
- 3
Read: Working a second job while on FMLA
Rules for outside work during leave, if that applies to you.
For survivors of childhood trauma
Do not check work email
Work email while on medical leave is the classic way employers later argue you were "not actually incapacitated." Set an out-of-office. Turn off notifications. If someone from work reaches out to your personal phone or email, reply once that you are on medical leave and cannot engage until you return.