SHRM26 Debrief · Legal & Compliant HR · #2955
It Pays to Get Sick in the U.S.: Navigating the Multi-State Paid Leave Maze
with Lauraine Bifulco
"The courts are never forgiving of the employer."
What it was about
Paid sick leave and paid-time-off laws in the U.S. have become a sprawling, inconsistent patchwork across states, counties, and cities, and HR/payroll teams must default to whichever rule is most generous to the employee whenever a law is silent or ambiguous.
By the numbers
19 states
Number of states that currently mandate paid sick leave or paid time off
20 different states
Number of states a consulting client needed to comply across when building a blanket policy, which the speaker helped narrow down to three tiers
six locations
Locations that mandate time off for any reason, not just sickness
Key notes
- When a paid sick leave law is silent or ambiguous on a compliance detail, default to the interpretation most generous to the employee, since labor commissioners and courts generally side with employees.
- Before substituting an existing PTO or vacation plan for a paid sick leave requirement, verify it meets every element of the law: accrual start date (many PTO plans don't start until 30-90 days versus sick leave starting at hire), accrual rate, carryover rules, and cash-out requirements.
- Determine the correct location for compliance based on where the employee actually works, not company headquarters, and build a specific methodology for hybrid employees who split time between jurisdictions.
The contrarian takeThe speaker argues that combining sick time and vacation into one all-purpose PTO plan, a trend many companies followed over the last decade to simplify administration, is often the wrong move. Blending everything into one bucket makes legal compliance harder, not easier, which is why many companies are now moving back toward a separate, dedicated paid sick leave plan.
Take this back Monday
Do this for your team
Audit your PTO plan's accrual start date against every state's sick-leave law before assuming it covers employees legally.
Say this in your next leadership meeting
When a paid sick leave law is ambiguous, we default to the most employee-generous interpretation, because courts side with employees, not employers.
Watch out for
- Assuming a PTO plan automatically satisfies paid sick leave law requirements without checking that its accrual start date, rate, and structure actually meet the legal minimums.
- Using an attendance bonus or year-end cash-out for unused sick time, which can be seen as discouraging employees from using legally protected paid sick leave.
- Not knowing how to count headcount correctly (state-only, national, or worldwide) when a law's benefit tier depends on employee count, and guessing incorrectly instead of erring toward the most generous count.
Fun fact · Lauraine Bifulco
She sits on the California Small Business Administration board, co-chairing its Labor Issues committee, while running HR offices across three states.
If this landed, see these
↳ Go deeperNavigating the Wild Habitat of Workforce RegulationsZooms out from sick leave specifics to the entire 2026 patchwork of workforce regulation employers now navigate.⇄ The counterpointHR Transformation: Building Strategic Impact During ChangeArgues HR should treat compliance as an iterative business capability, not just default-to-caution rule-following.✦ The unexpected oneEmotional Intelligence Is a System Skill That Makes Work WorkThe default-to-generous interpretation here is itself a systemic design choice, the same fix-the-system logic applied elsewhere.