As state-mandated leave laws continue expanding across the U.S., organizations with employees working in multiple states are facing an increasingly difficult compliance challenge. Requirements around accruals, reinstatement rules, eligibility, and employee mobility vary widely — and for organizations with seasonal or mobile workforces, manual tracking quickly becomes unsustainable.

At BLUEPRINT 4D 2026, Robert Usher of Samaritan’s Purse shared how his team leveraged PeopleSoft Absence Management to build a scalable special absence plan framework capable of handling evolving state requirements while minimizing administrative overhead.

The session offered both strategic and technical insight into how organizations can use PeopleSoft functionality, automation, and thoughtful configuration to simplify compliance management.

The Challenge: One Workforce, Multiple State Rules

Samaritan’s Purse operates across many states with employees frequently moving between locations during disaster response efforts. That mobility created significant complexity as more states introduced mandated leave requirements.

Usher explained that the organization identified roughly 17 to 18 states with varying regulations, including accrual requirements such as one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked, balance reinstatement rules for rehired employees, and differences in carryover policies.

Rather than attempting to maintain separate plans for every state, the organization chose a different approach: create a single special absence plan that consistently applied the most favorable interpretation for employees wherever possible.

That decision became the foundation for the entire project.

Why Workforce Mobility Made Compliance More Difficult

One of the more unique challenges discussed during the session involved employee movement between states.

Employees based in California might temporarily deploy to Texas, while others living in Texas could work assignments in Colorado. Determining which state’s leave rules should apply became a critical part of the design.

To solve this, the organization tied absence processing to the employee’s location identified by their job record within PeopleSoft. For remote workers, the system instead referenced the employee’s home address.

This allowed the organization to apply leave eligibility and accrual rules consistently while still supporting a highly mobile workforce.

Cleaning Up Workforce Data Before Automation

One of the most practical takeaways from the session was the importance of clean workforce data.

As the team began implementing the new framework, they discovered inconsistencies in pay groups and employee classifications. Temporary workers, associates, salaried employees, and regular employees were not always separated consistently across payroll structures.

Usher noted that the organization’s response efforts during Hurricane Helene exposed some of these operational weaknesses even further. Payroll continuity became a major concern during periods with limited connectivity and rapidly changing staffing needs.

The project ultimately became more than an absence management initiative. It also drove broader cleanup efforts around pay groups, job records, and workforce data consistency.

Creating a Special Absence Plan Structure

To support the new requirements, the team created a dedicated special absence management group tied to absence eligibility within PeopleSoft.

Rather than relying on HR staff to manually assign eligibility during high-volume hiring periods, the organization automated job record updates based on deployed location and configuration rules.

This was especially important during disaster deployments and seasonal surges tied to Operation Christmas Child hires, where large volumes of temporary employees may need to be processed quickly.

The team leveraged the Global Payroll identifier on the job record.  When using North America Payroll, the Global Payroll identifier serves as the Absence Management special pay group for determining eligibility processing.

Employees assigned to the special pay group only received access to the mandated leave plan, while regular full time employees retained access to broader leave programs such as vacation, sick, bereavement, and military leave.

Using Time and Labor Data for Accurate Accruals

Accurate accrual processing depended heavily on Time and Labor integration.

The organization tied leave accrual calculations directly to Time and Labor codes.  These codes were then associated with approved working earnings codes.

To ensure stable calculations, the team implemented a lockdown framework that prevented changes to timesheets associated with the pay period being processed.  Employees and managers were locked out after a designated cutoff time so the absence process could calculate balances against finalized data.

Once calculations completed, payroll processing could safely consume the approved balances and adjustments.

This sequencing helped eliminate discrepancies caused by late time entry updates.

Solving Retroactive Payroll Processing Challenges

One of the more technical portions of the session focused on retroactive payroll adjustments.

Usher explained that once payroll periods closed in Time and Labor, retroactive entries to Absence Management could incorrectly recalculate accruals to zero because the system no longer recognized approved payable time in closed periods.

To address this, the team changed the retro processing logic to reference paycheck pay earnings tables instead of relying solely on current payable time.

The result was more accurate retro calculations and improved long-term balance integrity.

Usher emphasized the importance of testing across multiple payroll periods, noting that successful processing in one cycle does not guarantee stability across ongoing retroactive scenarios.

Managing Rehires and Balance Reinstatement

Several state laws require leave balances to be restored if employees return within a specified timeframe.

To support those requirements, the organization created formulas and accumulators within Absence Management that preserved balances during termination processing.

When an employee was rehired, the system checked the stored termination date and automatically restored balances if the rehire occurred within the required window — typically within 12 months.

This automation reduced manual intervention while helping ensure compliance.

Focusing on Real-Time Accuracy Instead of Forecasting

One interesting design decision was the choice not to implement forecasting functionality for these absence plans.

Because accruals depended on actual hours worked — and balances were not allowed to go negative — forecasting future balances could easily create inaccurate expectations for temporary or seasonal employees.

Instead, the organization focused entirely on real-time accrual accuracy.

Helping Employees Access Their Balances

Since many temporary and associate employees were not accustomed to using PeopleSoft self-service tools, the organization also invested in improving usability.

Usher shared that the team leveraged guided learning functionality to help employees navigate Employee Self-Service and locate their absence balances more easily.

This helped reduce support requests while improving visibility into available leave balances.

A Practical Example of PeopleSoft Flexibility

Throughout the session, Usher walked attendees through the actual PeopleSoft components used in the solution, including pay groups, eligibility groups, formulas, arrays, accumulators, process lists, calendars, and generation controls.

He also shared examples of the SQL-based logic used to calculate initial balances and historic accruals.

The presentation ultimately demonstrated how flexible PeopleSoft Absence Management can be when organizations combine thoughtful functional design with targeted technical customization.

As state leave laws continue evolving, organizations will need scalable approaches that reduce manual administration while still supporting compliance. This session provided a strong real-world example of how that can be accomplished.

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