How HR Can Use Tech to Keep Up with the Constant Changes of Paid Leave Laws

By GovDocs Team | March 14, 2025

This article breaks down key considerations for multi-state paid leave compliance and how HR teams can streamline their processes.

The Challenge of Multi-Location Paid Leave Management
Future-Proof Your Paid Leave
Federal FMLA
Paid Sick Leave
Paid Family Medical Leave
Bereavement Leave Requirements
Voting Leave Requirements
Jury Duty Leave Requirements
Technology to Simplify Paid Leave Compliance Across Every Location
Take the Tech Forward Approach

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Key Takeaways:

Managing Multi-State Paid Leave is Complex: HR teams face challenges with varying state, county, and city requirements, including different accrual rates and eligibility rules. Manual tracking is time-consuming and error-prone.
Technology is Essential for Compliance: Automating paid leave tracking helps HR teams stay ahead of frequent law changes, minimize compliance risks, and streamline policy coordination across locations.
GovDocs Simplifies Paid Leave: GovDocs Paid Leave solution centralizes location-specific requirements for FMLA, paid sick leave, family medical leave, bereavement, voting, and jury duty leave, helping you to ensure accurate and compliant policies.
Future-Proof Your Paid Leave Strategy: A tech-forward approach with automated updates and easy-to-understand law summaries helps HR teams maintain efficiency, reduce errors, and enhance the overall employee experience.

Paid leave compliance is becoming increasingly complex, especially for HR teams managing employees across multiple states. Some states have their own requirements, coverage rules, and eligibility criteria—making it difficult to ensure every policy is up to date. Without a structured approach, HR teams risk mismanaging leave requests, payroll errors, and compliance gaps, which could lead to costly consequences.

The Challenge of Multi-Location Paid Leave Management

Unlike federal FMLA, which applies consistently across the United States, state and local-specific paid leave laws vary significantly. Some states require paid family and medical leave programs, while others mandate sick leave, disability leave, or unique coverage requirements.

Common challenges HR teams face include:

Some jurisdictions require employer-funded leave, while others have employee payroll deductions.
Coordination of leave policies across jurisdictions when county, city, and state requirements are present.
Keeping up with ever-changing updates, manual tracking is time-consuming and error prone.
Tracking varying eligibility rates, such as: accrual rate, max use, carryover, and more.

Future-Proof Your Paid Leave Compliance with Technology

As paid leave laws continue to expand, HR teams must embrace automation to stay compliant, reduce administrative burdens, and continue to grow. Investing in the right employment law compliance vendor ensures organizations paid leave policies:

Stay ahead of legislative changes
Reduce manual tracking errors
Minimize compliance risks
Improve employee experience

GovDocs Paid Leave solution navigates the patchwork of federal, state, and local paid leave regulations by integrating leave policies with existing benefits to ensure meticulous recordkeeping and maintaining compliance.

Stay Ahead of Changing Paid Leave Laws with GovDocs

GovDocs provides location-specific requirements for paid leave in the following areas to streamline policy updates and quickly answer employee questions, all while maintaining compliance.

Federal FMLA

Private employers with at least 50 employees within 75 miles must comply with the federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). It can be a challenge to coordinate federal FMLA, which is unpaid, with paid family medical leave in those states that provide paid family medical leave.

GovDocs Paid Leave provides an overview of the FMLA requirements to compare with the states that have paid family medical leave requirements to ensure employee’s leaves under FMLA and the applicable state paid family leave are appropriately coordinated and run consecutively where possible.

Compare the employee’s leave under both federal FMLA and the applicable state paid family and medical leave (where there is one) to determine whether just one or both laws apply.
Easily determine whether the leave should run concurrently under FMLA and the state paid family and medical leave.
Know whether additional leave is available beyond FMLA under the state paid family and medical leave.
Plain English summaries help HR understand the requirements and answer questions from employees.

Paid Sick Leave

HR teams face daily obstacles as they navigate paid sick leave laws across multiple locations and jurisdictions. Factors such as diverse legal requirements, accrual differences, record-keeping and reporting, policy harmonization, and employee communications continue to evolve, making manual tracking impossible and technology a must. GovDocs Paid Sick Leave summary tab makes it easy to craft regional and companywide policies by centralizing and summarizing location details including:

Accrual rate
Date accrual begins
Max use per year
Carryover

You can use these valuable insights for an in-depth examination to make informed decisions on your updated paid sick leave policies across locations.

Paid Family Medical Leave

When looking at paid family medical leave, HR teams see a patchwork of confusing laws and a tiresome amount of work to coordinate with other leave laws. Similar to paid sick leave, GovDocs solution centralizes organization’s location requirements for consistency to streamline policies, answer employee questions, and ensure leave compliance is met. In easy-to-understand summaries, each location has requirements for the following when applicable:

Covered employer
Covered employee
Covered family member
Eligible reasons for leave
Posting requirements
+ More!

Bereavement Leave Requirements

In a time of loss, employees need support from their place of work. The last burden they need is stress and confusion to deal with by an employer who doesn’t understand their legal requirements around the bereavement laws.

Complexities come into play with no federal regulation, but state mandated laws are adopted by over 8 states and counting. Such as:

Is it paid or unpaid?
What are eligible reasons for leave?
Who can you take the leave for?
What are the notice requirements?

Voting Leave Requirements

Yearly, employers face the same challenges and requirements of their voting-leave related laws. These laws add complexity due to their differentiators, such as:

What are the hourly limits?
Can voting be done before or after work?
Is it paid or unpaid?
What states have a voting law mandated?

Jury Duty Leave Requirements

Jury duty is legally required for those selected, and many US citizens view it as not only a responsibility, but also as an important civic function. Granting accurate time off for jury duty is important to remain reputable in employee’s eyes.

Although the federal law doesn’t require time off, complexities include, but are not limited to:

What jurisdictions require paid or unpaid leave for jury duty?
What are the employee protections?
Who are eligible employees?
What are the leave requirements for my locations?

Technology to Simplify Paid Leave Compliance Across Every Location

According to HR.com’s research report, under a third of organizations (28%), are up to date on technology for their compliance-related operations. With technology having such a large presence in today’s world, it’s a scary thought that only 23% have an employment law compliance process that is automated. Shifting operations to a tech-forward approach is easy with GovDocs Paid Leave solution. Plan for employer contribution, policy updates, and more with the following helpful tools:

Improve productivity and enhance decision-making with a user-friendly dashboard
Stay informed and operationally ready with 30, 60, and 90-day email notifications with laws are amended or passed.
Communicate and comprehend requirements to location managers and employees with easy-to-understand summaries of the laws
Tailor, export and filter requirements to fit a criterion for your business needs
Review the previous 365 days of amended or passed laws in effect to ensure all policies are up to date

Conclusion: Tech-Forward Approach for Paid Leave Compliance

Keeping up with ever-changing paid leave laws across multiple jurisdictions is a daunting task for HR teams. Manual tracking is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors that can lead to compliance risks and financial penalties. With the right technology, such as GovDocs Paid Leave, HR teams can streamline compliance, automate updates, and ensure accurate, location-specific policies—saving time, reducing risk, and improving the employee experience.

This Employment Law News blog is intended for market awareness only, it is not to be used for legal advice or counsel.

Who is GovDocs?

GovDocs simplifies employment law compliance for large employers in the U.S. and Canada. The GovDocs software platform integrates three solutions in one convenient place to help you master the employment laws impacting your business. Whether you manage a labor law posters, minimum wage or paid leave program, our products cut through research time, provide proactive insights into the everchanging landscape of employment laws and reduce the risk of noncompliance. The company is headquartered in Eagan, Minn.

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