May 27, 2021
Dear Colleagues,
For the past six months, Human Resources, Payroll, IS&T and you, our HR Partners, have all worked together to implement significant changes to MIT’s leave administration program. These include:
- updating and enhancing MIT Policies to comply with new state and federal leave regulations, while maintaining our generous leave benefits;
- engaging the company Workpartners to administer the increasing number of employee leaves and to develop user-friendly reporting processes; and
- enhancing MIT’s technical systems to track, pay, and report on leaves appropriately.
These initiatives are extremely complex and we very much appreciate your patience and participation in making all three efforts a success.
As you can imagine, the link between what policies and laws require, what our employees and DLC managers request, and what our systems can handle, is fragile and complicated. Overseeing the leaves administration program has become as much a matter of policy compliance and technical wizardry as it is an employee benefit.
For that reason, effective June 1, as we move forward with the final phase of the policy and system changes that will result in the implementation of new Family Sick Leave provisions on July 1, we are also making an organizational change to recognize the compliance and system-development aspects of the updated leaves program. We are moving the Disabilities Services and Medical Leaves Office (DSMLO) from HR’s Employee Relations area to the Projects and Compliance group, which is led by Jennifer Walsh. Jennifer currently has oversight of the I-9 Office – another area that blends compliance with employee services -- and she has also been very involved in the development and efforts associated with the updated Leaves Program. We believe DSMLO will fit well in the Policy and Compliance group.
DSMLO and Workpartners contact information and processes will all remain unchanged. Should you need to reach Jennifer directly, she can be contacted at jwalsh@mit.edu.
Sincerely,
Ramona and Lianne