The overseers of Connecticut’s new paid family and medical leave program want to ensure employers are well informed about the new mandate, as the January launch of a 0.5% employee payroll contribution looms.
In the coming weeks, Connecticut motorists will see highway billboards highlighting the impending launch of the paid leave program. The Paid Family and Medical Leave Authority has also conducted nearly 40 webinars with employers, the most recent of which had nearly 1,000 virtual attendees, and it’s also preparing a mass mailing campaign, authority CEO Andrea Barton Reeves said in an interview Tuesday.
The program’s website, which launched in September, is also getting lots of traffic, roughly 5,000 new visitors per week of late.
“So people are coming and learning about the program,” Barton Reeves said.
However, you wouldn’t know it from a newly released survey of 452 human resources leaders in Connecticut, Massachusetts and several other states with imminent program launches, as well as in several states with programs already in force.
Published last week by employee benefits and insurance provider The Standard, the survey found that only 25% of respondents felt well prepared to administer their state paid leave programs.
It found that smaller firms (25-99 employees) were particularly apprehensive, with 80% reporting they didn’t feel “very well prepared” to administer the new programs in their respective states. Overall, 60% of companies felt the same way.
The survey, which did not break out its results by state, also found that employers had little faith in their respective governments, with 64% expressing a lack of confidence in their state’s ability to administer a paid leave program and 59% doubting their state’s financial stability and ability to pay claims. (A recent analysis of Connecticut’s program found it can remain solvent, despite expected impacts from COVID-19)
There are some caveats to the survey, conducted by Versta Research:
- The data is old. The responses were collected in January and February, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck and around the same time Gov. Ned Lamont named Barton Reeves as Connecticut’s paid leave overseer.
- The Standard offers “absence management outsourcing,” which the survey calls “a good option” for employers worried they don’t have the time or wherewithal to administer new paid leave programs in house.
Barton Reeves acknowledges that the paid leave program may not be top of mind for some employers, especially because of the pandemic, but she’s confident in the authority’s outreach and education efforts.
“I think there’s definitely much more increased awareness and understanding since the time that this survey was done,” she said.
There was one concern in the survey to which Barton Reeves is sympathetic, related to employers who have operations in multiple states that require paid leave benefits: 39% of survey respondents said they expected difficulty complying with the varying rules of the state programs.
Barton Reeves recently heard from an HR manager who works for a company with offices in four such states, including Connecticut.
“She’s managing four different leave programs and I do feel for her because they’re all different,” she said. “It would be nice if we had a federal paid leave program that each state was responsible for administering.”
