In the past year, my employer made the move to transition administration of its leave of absence process to a third party named Hewitt. Hewitt is renowned in the HR world for really knowing their stuff - and being experts and awesome executors. When the corporation decided to make this move, I think everyone believe it really was the smartest decision they could make. Give the job to someone who will do it really, really well.
Hmmm ... now that I am currently going through the process, I think everyone was tricked. It has been anything but smooth. It took them two weeks to send me the paperwork to try to get it signed by doctor confirming that I had given birth. In the meantime, they said they would call to try to expedite the process. I would never hear back from them if they had gotten a hold of anyone and so I would constantly be calling ... because let's face it, it regarding me getting paid. Maybe it's not a big deal to them if someone else misses there paycheck, but as the sole income earner for my family, and thinking about the impending large medical bills that result from having a baby in the NICU, I sort of need everyone of my paychecks that is due to me.
I vented on Facebook about how the process wasn't going smoothly. A scary result. Everyone else who works for the same employer who has recently been on leave started to admit their horror stories. Everyone was having issues. Frankly, Hewitt is dropping the ball and our corporate mega employer doesn't seem to be moving too quickly to correct it. In fact, I sent a formal written complaint via email and the response I received back from our own internal people perfectly illustrated that they just wanted to pass the buck back to Hewitt and weren't taking personal accountability. These are people's lives and livelihoods. Really, we can't be laissez-faire about this.
Then, what aggravated me more was yesterday I receive an email from my boss. She was forwarding me Hewitt's notice to here. They email stated that my return to work date was Jan. 31. This is the date my short-term-disability (physically recuperating from the act of giving birth) would be over, but I had told Hewitt that I intended to take another six weeks under FMLA (um ... which I believe is my legal right ...) and that I would be supplementing those days with my reserve of vacation - which I had been saving for a year so that I could get an almost completely paid leave. Fortunately, a peer of mine is also on leave, so my boss was able to compare that her leave request was processed correctly and mine wasn't.
So, now I'm about to make another call to Hewitt, where I will probably receive poor service (as has been the case the five other times I've had to call them) and they will make me feel like I am putting them out. I mean, god forbid, why am I concerned about getting paid? Why do I actually want to take time off to celebrate the life of my newborn child? Why do I want to make sure that my legal rights are actually taken into consideration?
I've been having serious thoughts about my future and determining what is best for my employment now that I am the single income earner. This is a serious topic considering I've been at my current employer for almost ten years. It's a lot of loyalty and commitment I've made to them. Unfortunately, the handling of my leave is putting a few check marks into the "reasons to start looking elsewhere" column.
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