The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and its California counterpart, the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), allow workers to take time off each year to care for their own or a family member's serious health condition, or to bond with a new child.

Employers have complained about certain aspects of the law for years — particularly intermittent leaves. "The law is used by people with attendance problems," says Michael Eastman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "You have an employee with chronic tardiness … who says it's for a health condition."

Many employers have pointed out that claimed health problems are especially prevalent on Mondays and Fridays, and unjustified intermittent leaves always create problems for staffing and productivity.

Our HR Management & Compliance Report: How To Comply with California and Federal Leave Laws, covers everything you need to know to stay in compliance with both state and federal law in one of the trickiest areas of compliance for even the most experienced HR professional. Learn the rules for pregnancy and parental leaves, medical exams and certifications, intermittent leaves, required notices, and more.

So what can you do? Although California employers cannot require employees to present a new medical certification for each instance of intermittent leave taken, you can take proactive steps to help curb abuses. Here are 4 ideas:

1. Track each intermittent leave absence against the medical certification the employee initially submitted. For example, if the medical certification indicates that the employee will need to be absent one day a week for six weeks to undergo medical treatment, the leave taken by the employee should be reviewed to ensure that the employee doesn't take more than one day each week or extend the leave beyond the six-week time period without obtaining additional medical certification.
2. Have the employee work with you in setting up a schedule that includes as many treatments as possible in off-work hours. For example, if an employee wants to be gone for a treatment every day at 2 p.m. and it's an hour's drive away, you can ask, "Could you do it earlier or later to minimize the impact?"
3. Transfer the employee to a position where absences are less disruptive. The law permits this, as long as pay and benefits remain equivalent to the previous job.
4. Make use of the new 2009 rules, which require an employee to reassert the specific condition for which intermittent leave is being taken for each absence. Thus, if an employee has approved intermittent leave relating to a serious knee injury, you should make sure that when the employee requests two days off, the employee verifies that the time off is related to the knee injury.