Most US employers are adding leave programs without building the infrastructure to run them, calling their value into question, according to Maria Trapenasso, national practice leader for talent solutions at NFP in New York.
She spoke with Insurance Business Benefits US following the recent release of the 2027 NFP US Leave Management Report, which drew on a benchmarking survey of 1,004 US employers conducted with research firm Empatix. As covered by IBB, the report found that only 26% of employers say they are very confident in their ability to administer leave accurately and in compliance with applicable law, even as the range of leave types continues to grow.
Trapenasso, pictured, said that C-suites often do not fully understand the complexity of what they are asking HR teams to manage.
"I don't know that they understand the investment that they really should be making in their team to help them focus solely on leave administration," she said. "The survey also reported how many organizations had a leave administrator who's doing a million other things - they're not just focused on leave administration; they also have a regular job they're managing as well."
The operational data backs that up. Among employers managing leave without dedicated software, 46% report spending three to five hours administering each leave request, up from 37% the prior year, according to the NFP report. Even employers using dedicated software are not fully shielded, with nearly half of that group still spending three or more hours per request.
That time burden matters because leave administration involves the overlapping demands of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), state paid family and medical leave (PFML) programs, short-term disability coordination, and a fast-expanding roster of jurisdiction-specific rules.
The compliance stakes are real: under FMLA, employers found in violation can face back pay, liquidated damages equal to the back pay amount, and attorney's fees, meaning a single mishandled leave can cost multiples of the original wages at issue.
"When COVID happened, a lot of employers started to hire remotely," Trapenasso said. "They may have been in one or two states, maybe three states, but now all of a sudden they had access to talent in every state. Without thinking really of the repercussions that followed, they just started hiring all these employees remotely and now they've got a completely remote workforce and all the laws that go with it."
The report also surfaces a meaningful disconnect between how employers view their own leave offerings and how they think their employees perceive them. Sixty-three percent of employers believe their leave benefits are generous, while only 48% believe their employees share that view, according to the NFP report.
Trapenasso said the root cause is rarely a benefits design failure; it is a communication failure. "If an employee doesn't know that they have a benefit, does it really exist to them?" she said. "If they don't know about it, if they don't know how to use it, if they don't think it pertains to them - communication is a really big key there."
She recommended that employers move away from competitor benchmarking as the primary driver of benefits decisions and toward active employee surveying.
"A better way to really address employee benefits is surveying their employees, understanding what they really need and want, and then creating campaigns around it," she said. Brokers are well positioned to support that kind of outreach: NFP, she noted, provides clients with digital, proactive employee communications so that workers can access benefits online rather than searching reactively when a need arises.
The issue connects directly to how benefits perception gaps cost employers talent, a dynamic documented in separate 2026 research by Prudential.
Two areas in the NFP report point to where leave policy is heading — and where employer awareness has not kept up.
Caregiver leave adoption grew from 29% in 2023 to 34% in 2026, according to the NFP report, but most employers still offer fewer than three weeks. Trapenasso argued that duration alone is not the measure that matters most.
"I'm not sure that three weeks is enough time, but if they at least provided it on a flexible basis - if they offered intermittent leave, if they allowed employees to align their leave benefits with FMLA and other caregiver PFML benefits that exist - then at least employees are getting the monetary benefit, the job protections, along with the leave offered by the employer."
She predicted the trajectory will continue. "Employers are going to realize that the people asking for caregiver leave are their most seasoned employees - the ones that are really driving success within the organization," she said. With five generations currently present in the US workforce, she added, caregiving responsibilities are stretching further than ever - grandparents managing elderly partners while also supporting grandchildren, compounding the case for flexible, broad caregiver leave policies.
On menopause, 54% of employers in the NFP survey said they were unaware of emerging state and local legislation - a significant blind spot as the regulatory landscape shifts.
Trapenasso clarified that the regulations enacted so far, covering 12 jurisdictions plus Philadelphia, are primarily benefit plan requirements rather than workplace accommodation mandates, with seven states now requiring some form of insurance inclusion.
"Employers have to look at their benefit programs," she said. "They have to look at how they're offering their benefit programs, because they're going to have to include this in their benefit plans. That's huge."
For brokers, that creates a specific near-term client conversation. An employer who has not recently audited whether their group health plan covers menopause-related treatments - specialty drugs, hormone therapy, coaching - may already be out of compliance in states where coverage is required. The Department of Labor's guidance on ERISA-governed health plan requirements provides a useful framework for those conversations.
On the question of third-party leave administration, Trapenasso offered a pointed caution. Employers looking to outsource or deploy dedicated software must first ensure their own policies are sound.
"They can't go to an outside vendor with a broken policy and say, 'We want to use you as a vendor,'" she said. "They need to have those aligned, make sure they understand that their processes are working correctly, and then move to a vendor that will be a partner. They're not going to take everything off their plate, they're just going to be a partner in that whole administrative process."
That sequencing matters for brokers advising clients considering leave administration solutions. A leave policy audit - checking alignment between internal policy and FMLA, state PFML, short-term disability, and any applicable local ordinances - is the natural first step, and one brokers are well positioned to lead. As IBB has reported, clients losing talent may find their benefits package is the cause, making the leave conversation a retention issue as much as a compliance one.
