Benefits that work to cohesively support employees: Short-Term Disability Coverage in PFML states

In times of need, people don’t experience a disability, leave or other type of claim. They experience an event that impacts many facets of their life, and their benefits should complement each other in such a way as to empathetically support them when it matters.

Designing a coordinated, guided approach that creates both a supportive model for employees, and an efficient model for employers, isn’t simple. In a recent Voya survey, 70% of employers cited leave delays due to missing or incomplete documentation.¹

But if HR leaders and benefit advisors look honestly at how their benefits programs are actually designed — and whether the pieces they’ve assembled work the way employees need them to when something challenging happens, it’s possible to have the best of both worlds.

The intersection of leave of absence management

As of 2026, state-issued Paid Family Medical Leave (PFML) programs* are active or launching across 17 states and territories, giving more employees access to income protection during caregiving, medical recovery and family milestones. This is meaningful progress for employees, but it’s critical to understand the programs’ limitations.

PFML provides a statutory income replacement foundation. What it wasn’t designed to do is follow an employee through every dimension of their leave-of-absence experience. For example, it may not offer all the features, or even the duration, Short Term Disability (STD) insurance or coverage can provide.

For employers thinking about how STD and PFML work together, there are three moments in an employee’s leave journey where integrated program design makes a concrete difference.

1. While the PFML determination is pending. State programs may involve a processing window before benefits begin. During that interval, employees may have no income replacement. STD can offer coverage that begins as soon as any required waiting period is completed (often seven days), providing a percentage of income replacement from the first day of eligible leave and helping HR teams to move forward with coordinated claim timelines.
2. During a gradual return to work. Recovery may not always be a clean transition. For example, employees may return to a reduced schedule before they are ready for full duties, and PFML benefits may not last as long as STD benefits or may not provide support throughout that transition period. STD may be able to offer additional support by continuing to pay a partial benefit while the employee gradually returns to work (up to the maximum duration of the benefit). This support is intended to help employees maintain income stability while they continue recovering and resume work as they are able.
3. Across the full administration experience. Running STD concurrently with PFML, rather than sequentially, and administering under one carrier, aligns medical certifications, claim determinations and return-to-work planning under one framework instead of two. For HR, this means:
   • One set of documentation requirements, not duplicated across programs
   • Consistent eligibility decisions rather than parallel, potentially conflicting outcomes
   • A single coordinated timeline that’s easier to track and communicate to employees

On the last point, the administrative simplification isn’t just an operational benefit. It helps to directly shape what employees experience — whether they feel like they’re being guided through something or left to navigate it alone.

Complementary benefit design is a structural question

The way the leave experience supports an employee may depend on whether their benefits show up as a connected system, or as a series of separate transactions they must manage themselves.

This is the practical challenge behind an integrated, event-based claims process. The idea is straightforward: rather than organizing claims support around individual products, organize it around the life-event itself. When something happens — a birth, an illness, an injury — the employee would receive coordinated communication about all the benefits for which they are eligible, guided next steps and support that accounts for the full picture of their situation.

For employers evaluating how their benefits perform at the moment of a claim, a few indicators are worth examining:

• Is return-to-work planning coordinated across disability and leave, or does it happen in silos?
• Do employees know that they may be eligible for multiple benefits for a single event, or are they accountable to submit separate claims?
• When an employee calls for help, do they reach someone with the time and context to actually support them, or are they routed through a process?

This is where the real difference between a benefits program that earns trust and one that disappoints gets made.

A framework for HR leaders

For organizations reviewing their leave benefit programs as PFML continues to expand, three questions can help focus the conversation:

• Does our benefit design follow the employee’s journey? Map the actual leave arc: waiting period, recovery and gradual return. Design around those moments. The opportunities are usually visible once the journey is laid out.
• Are our benefits running concurrently or sequentially? Concurrent STD and PFML administration is operationally simpler and experientially better. Sequential models can include varying benefit duration periods that employees may discover at the worst possible time.
• What does our claims experience look like from the employee’s perspective? Ask: if an employee filed a leave claim today without prior knowledge of the process, would they feel supported? Would they know what benefits they were likely eligible for? Would someone proactively help them, or would they need to advocate for themselves?

The employers who can answer those questions confidently will have built something that goes beyond claims submission — a program their employees genuinely rely on.

Empathetically, holistically supporting employees

Why is a holistic claims experience so meaningful? Disjointed leave experiences affect productivity and operations. In the same survey, 92% of those surveyed reported that leave of absence causes workload/productivity impact and 63% of those surveyed say managers spend 4+ hours per leave.¹

PFML expansion is an opportunity for HR leaders to step back and ask whether their benefit programs are designed around events that actually happen in their employees’ lives — or around how products have historically been structured.

The answer to that question, more than any single benefit feature, determines what employees experience when something difficult happens in their lives. Benefits that work together, coordinated with care and clarity, are how employers demonstrate that the support they’ve promised is real.

This approach has an opportunity to help organizations to empathetically, holistically support their employees.

¹ Voya Financial Consumer Insights & Research survey conducted April 2-28, 2026, with Morning Consult among 923 employees who have taken leave in the past two years, 157 employes who only considered taking leave, and 178 employers who offer leave/absence management.

*For the purposes of this article, PFML is inclusive of Statutory Disability, Paid Family Leave and Paid Family and Medical Leave plans.

Voya recently released STD in a PFML World: Navigating Income Gaps, Compliance Complexity, and Coverage Design in a Changing Leave Landscape, available at voya.com/employeebenefits.