The Leave Specialist will serve as the subject matter expert for leave and disability management and drive operational excellence through our leave processes. This role will focus on redesigning the leave process to enhance the associate and leader experience and drive efficiency while ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local regulations.
Responsibilities:
- Redesign leave and disability administration to deliver a positive associate experience, while reducing administrative burden through streamlined, compliant processes.
- Administer end-to-end leave and disability processes, including FMLA, ADA, and other statutory or company-specific leaves, partnering closely with HR to resolve escalated cases.
- Collaborate with HR, Legal, and Payroll to ensure accurate processing and seamless integration of leave policies and end-to-end processes.
- Partner with external plan administrators to deliver high-quality, efficient services that feel like an extension of our internal team, resolving escalated issues quickly and preventing them in the future.
- Establish and own key metrics that measure the effectiveness, quality, and efficiency of the leave and disability processes, identifying misses and implementing improvements both internally and with the external plan administrator.
- Investigate data transmission issues to identify root cause and partner with cross-functional teams (such as Digital & Technology and external plan administrators) to implement improvements to eliminate data issues going forward.
- Relentlessly identify and implement opportunities to improve processes to eliminate errors, manual touches, and fragmented experiences.
- Conduct regular and ad hoc reviews, audits, and reporting of benefits and leave programs to ensure compliance.
- Provide high-quality service to associates, leaders, and HR on leave inquiries.
- Partner with the workers’ compensation administrators to deliver a cohesive compliant leave process.
- Support implementation of new benefit and leave programs and/or administrators ensuring accurate data conversion and establishing new administrative processes.
- Develop and deliver simple and effective total rewards communication materials.
- Educate HR and leaders on leave programs and processes driving clarity, awareness, and compliance.
- Monitor leave trends and metrics to identify opportunities for improvement.
- Ad-hoc projects as assigned