DMEC | Workplace Accommodation and Leave Solutions

2026 Inside Track Series Webinar: ERISA & Disability – Time to Update Your Plans!

Jai Hooker — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:49:07 +0000

Many employers haven’t taken a comprehensive look at their ERISA‑covered disability plans in years—often relying on legacy design decisions that no longer align with today’s workforce, health and wellness program objectives, or administrative realities. As benefit strategies evolve, ERISA continues to shape how disability plans are structured, communicated, and administered within employer‑sponsored programs.

In this session, Alight’s ERISA experts will help you step back and re‑evaluate your ERISA disability plan design, focusing on key components to consider when creating, updating, or modernizing plans. Rather than concentrating solely on claims and appeals, we’ll look upstream at plan architecture and emerging design trends across leave programs. Attendees will gain a practical framework for assessing whether their current plans still support health and wellness goals—or whether it’s time for a refresh.

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2026 Tools & Tactics Webinar: Understanding the Forces Reshaping Accommodation Requests

Jai Hooker — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 18:19:57 +0000

Workplace accommodation requests are rising, and the workforce dynamics behind that growth are not going away. For HR and leave professionals, the question is no longer whether volumes will increase, but whether your organization has the policies, people, and support structures in place to keep pace as the nature of those requests continues to shift.

Three forces are reshaping the accommodation landscape right now.

Return-to-office mandates have created a new wave of requests that sit at the intersection of operational policy and legal obligation, requiring employers to navigate competing priorities they weren’t facing a few years ago.
Mental health needs have become one of the most common — and most complex — drivers of accommodation requests, demanding approaches that traditional processes were often not built to handle.
And as the workforce ages, chronic physical conditions are an increasingly significant reality that HR teams can expect to manage with greater frequency in the years ahead.
What ties all three together is a single question: Is your accommodation infrastructure keeping pace? That means looking beyond process to examine policy design, manager preparedness, and the support resources available to employees navigating challenging circumstances.

Attendees will leave with practical insights across each of these areas and a clearer sense of where to focus next.

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2026 Tools & Tactics Webinar: Maine’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Program is Here – What You Need to Know

Jai Hooker — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:38:59 +0000

Maine’s Paid Family and Medical Leave program begins May 1, 2026. This session will focus on what you need to know about your rights and responsibilities as an employer, and what information you need to share with your employees. We’ll explore how you can interact with the program’s claims administrator and what tasks they’re doing, so you don’t have to.

You’ll walk away with a solid understanding of who is and is not eligible for benefits under the program, what leave reasons are covered, and how benefit payments will be calculated. We’ll also share best practices to deal with the specific nuances of Maine’s program.

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Webinar Recording:13th Annual DMEC Employer Leave Management Survey Insights

Jai Hooker — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:05:25 +0000

As leave management continues to grow in complexity, so do the challenges facing absence and disability professionals. If you’ve ever wondered how your organization’s leave benefits compare to others in your industry—or sought benchmarks to refine your leave management processes—this was a session you didn’t want to miss!

We took an in-depth look at the findings from the 13th DMEC Employer Leave Management Survey, conducted in collaboration with Spring Consulting Group. This year’s survey provided a comprehensive view of evolving leave management practices, including:

Outsourcing trends and administration models
Caseload management for internal and external staff
Technology adoption and integration strategies
Process design to support regulatory and non-regulatory leaves, accommodations, and return-to-work programs

We broke down results by employer size, industry, and method of administration, offering actionable insights to help you benchmark and optimize your programs. In addition to analyzing 2025 survey data, we explored emerging trends and future challenges shaping the absence and disability management landscape.

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain tools and knowledge that will help you stay ahead in an ever-changing environment.

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2026 Tools & Tactics Webinar: 4 Steps to Reducing the Cost and Frequency of Stress-Related LOA

Jai Hooker — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 22:31:14 +0000

Learn four practical, evidence-based steps organizations can take to reduce both the frequency and cost of stress-related leaves of absence. Drawing on new data and real-world outcomes, our experts show how building resilience before, during, and after leave helps employees return to work sooner, and reintegrate with their team faster. The session will explore how individual thinking patterns, team dynamics, and organizational culture all influence leave outcomes and what leaders can do at each level to create psychologically safe, high-performing environments.

Attendees will leave with a clear, actionable framework for boosting resilience across the workforce to lower disability incidence, reduce healthcare spend, curb absenteeism and presenteeism, and improve retention—turning leave from a cost burden into an opportunity for long-term workforce strength.

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2026 Tools & Tactics Webinar: The State of Accommodations in 2026

Jai Hooker — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 22:23:21 +0000

With recent shifts in the workplace, including widespread return‑to‑office policies and the Great Realignment of 2022, the landscape of employee accommodations has changed significantly. As a result, accommodations in the workplace, as well as flexible and remote options, have never been more critical.

This webinar will look at accommodation trends over the last few years and then discuss the pitfalls associated with managing accommodations, along with strategies for overcoming those pitfalls and barriers.

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2026 Mastering Modern Leave and Accommodations Webinar: Managing a Multigenerational Workforce with Divergent Leave Needs

Jai Hooker — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:22:19 +0000

For the first time, many organizations are supporting five generations of employees. And each has distinct life circumstances, health needs, and expectations around time away from work. A young employee managing anxiety, a new parent bonding with a child, and a long-tenured worker recovering from surgery all need leave, but the reasons, accommodations, and communication preferences couldn’t be more different.

This session draws on new generational data from AbsenceSoft’s 2026 research to explore how leave and accommodation patterns diverge by age, and what that means for program design. We’ll share practical strategies for building flexible, equitable frameworks that meet employees where they are without creating administrative chaos for your team.

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2026 Tools & Tactics Webinar: Maryland Paid Family and Medical Leave Updates for 2028

Jai Hooker — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 15:51:32 +0000

Maryland is scheduled to join the Paid Family and Medical Leave landscape in 2028, increasing both the national footprint for these important benefit programs and the administrative complexity for multi-state employers.

In this session, we will help employers understand program eligibility, plus relevant key updates to benefits, contribution rates and rules ahead of January 1, 2027 pre-funding start date. We’ll also cover funding options, state plan administration rules, private plan opt out period considerations and provide detailed benefit calculation examples. The goal is to ensure employers understand their options and are prepared for a successful launch prior to the proposed January 2028 go live date.

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Webinar Recording: Taking Control of Rising Leave and Accommodations Requests

Jai Hooker — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 15:17:00 +0000

For the third year in a row, the majority of HR leaders report significant increases in both leave and accommodations requests, with many teams now managing more than double the caseload they had just three years ago. As requests continue to surge, HR teams are struggling to keep up with programs and processes that can’t scale. Without the right systems and strategies in place, rising volume creates serious compliance risk under the FMLA, ADA, PWFA, and state leave laws.

In this webinar, experts walked through why leave and accommodations requests are increasing, the most common compliance pitfalls that emerge when teams are stretched thin, and practical approaches for building capacity and compliance.

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2026 Tools & Tactics Webinar: Future Proofing Absence: Trends and AI Impacts

Jai Hooker — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 17:58:47 +0000

This webinar explores how HR and absence leaders can move from reactive, manual leave administration to proactive, compliant, and employee-centric programs. Drawing on insights from Pulpstream’s 2026 State of Leave Management benchmark report and a real-world case study from a large, multi-state employer managing nearly 30,000 employees, this session highlights how AI-powered automation is reshaping absence management. Attendees will learn how intelligent workflows will bring new efficiencies to absence management. The webinar will also address emerging compliance complexity, multi-state challenges, and why organizations that invest in AI-driven leave platforms are better positioned to scale, stay compliant, and support employees during critical life moments.

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