The NY Paid Family Leave Policy Outline | Free template download

The New York Paid Family Leave law - which takes effect on January 1, 2018 - requires all qualifying employers to provide "proper written guidance" to all of their employees about the new law. This article will focus on the policy outline employers must update their employee handbooks with, to explain the law in greater detail.

Note: This is part of a series of articles about New York's new Paid Family Leave program. Click here to browse all articles about Paid Family Leave.

The Paid Family Leave policy outline

The policy outline  is the second of two forms of employee notification employers must fulfill in order to comply with Paid Family Leave. (Click here to read more about the first form, the employee notification letter.) Here's what you need to know about this outline...

• As opposed to the initial employee notification letter to introduce the law in broad strokes, the policy outline is meant to explain the new Paid Family Leave law in more detail.
• The policy outline explains how the law works for employees, what it means for them and explains how they would go about requesting leave (essentially filing a claim).
• It also serves as guidance to the employer's HR department regarding the way the process unfolds.
• Employers should insert the policy outline into their employee handbook, and then notify all their employees that the handbook has been updated with this policy. (If you don't have an employee handbook, we suggest creating one. But the policy outline can still be placed on company letterhead and shared with all employees separately.)
• This needs to be shared with all employees before January 1, 2018, but our legal partners have suggested sharing it by December 1, 2017 at the latest.

Download the free template

Although the state is requiring all employers to provide "proper written guidance" on the new law, they have yet to be very specific about what exactly that entails.

Fortunately, we've teamed up with the law firm Harris Beach to develop a policy template that meets that requirement and will properly satisfy step two of the compliance process.

Click the image button below to download that template.