NFP's Maria Trapenasso on why C-suite underinvestment is the real leave crisis
Most U.S. employers are expanding their leave programs. Far fewer are building the capacity to run them well and the gap is landing squarely on HR.
That is the central finding of the 2027 NFP U.S. Leave Management Report, which drew on a benchmarking survey of 1,004 U.S. employers conducted with research firm Empatix.
Only 26% of employers say they are very confident in their ability to administer leave accurately and in compliance with applicable law. Maria Trapenasso, national practice leader for talent solutions at NFP in New York, spoke with HRD about what is driving that number and what HR leaders can do about it.
The C-suite investment problem
Trapenasso was direct about where the leave administration confidence gap originates. It is not an HR competency problem. It is a resourcing problem — and one that C-suites are largely responsible for creating.
"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 supports that. 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 leave management software are not fully shielded, with nearly half of that group still spending three or more hours per request.
The case to bring to the C-suite is not abstract. 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. 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. That is a board-level risk dressed up as an HR operations issue.
Trapenasso also pointed to a structural shift that many organizations have not yet fully reckoned with.
"When COVID happened, a lot of employers started to hire remotely," she 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."
Communication is a benefits strategy
Beyond the administration gap, the NFP report surfaces a perception problem that HR leaders are uniquely positioned to fix. Sixty-three percent of employers believe their leave benefits are generous, while only 48% believe their employees share that view, according to the report.
Trapenasso's diagnosis is pointed.
"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."
Her recommendation is to 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.
Benefits that employees feel were designed in response to their feedback generate more loyalty than benefits that simply match what competitors offer — and that distinction shows up in retention numbers.
Caregiver leave and the menopause accommodation gap
Two areas in the NFP report point to where employee expectations are running ahead of employer policy.
Caregiver leave adoption grew from 29% in 2023 to 34% in 2026, according to the report, but most employers still offer fewer than three weeks. Trapenasso argued that duration is not the only metric that matters.
"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."
With five generations currently in the U.S. workforce, the caregiving picture is more complex than it has ever been. Trapenasso noted that employees are managing elderly parents alongside grandchildren, compounding the case for flexible, broad caregiver leave. She predicted that employer adoption will accelerate as organizations recognize who is actually requesting the benefit.
"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.
On menopause, 54% of employers in the NFP survey said they were unaware of emerging state and local legislation — a significant gap as regulations multiply. Trapenasso clarified that the laws 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 HR leaders, the menopause accommodation conversation is also a talent retention argument.
"The people that are holding institutional knowledge — they are the foundation of the organization. As they support these women, they'll stay in the workforce longer, they'll feel supported, they'll definitely give back more than they're actually even receiving,” Trapenasso said.
Fix the policy before you outsource the problem
When considering third-party leave administration solutions or dedicated software, Trapenasso offered a caution that applies equally to internal and external options. The tool is only as good as the policy it is administering.
"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."
The starting point, then, is a leave policy audit: checking alignment between internal policy and FMLA, state PFML, short-term disability, and any applicable local ordinances.
For HR leaders who have expanded into new states through remote hiring without revisiting their leave stack, that audit is likely overdue. The compliance exposure is real, the talent cost of getting it wrong is measurable, and the C-suite case for proper resourcing has never been easier to make.
