Overview
New Jersey Temporary Disability Insurance (NJ-STD) provides cash benefits to New Jersey workers who must stop working due to a physical or mental health condition, or other disability unrelated to their work. Eligible employees also receive job restoration rights while collecting NJ-STD benefits.
For detailed legislative requirements, see our Legislative Guidance.
Policy Status Decisions
This policy is administered by the state unless the employer has an approved plan to administer on their own.
💡 Best Practice: Follow the state's decision so the policy status matches the state's determination for benefits.
How to Use
Throughout this guidance, look for these labels to quickly identify what actions may be needed:
✅ Automatic: System handles this automatically, no action needed.
📝 Configuration Note: How the policy is set up in the platform.
💡 Best Practice: AbsenceSoft recommendation for optimal management.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: User must complete this action or track elsewhere.
How AbsenceSoft Manages the Law
AbsenceSoft manages this law through 1 policy:
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Policy Name - New Jersey Temporary Disability Insurance
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Policy Code - NJ-STD
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Benefit Type - Paid Leave and Job Protection
Administration Options
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State Plan (default)- Administered through the state's Division of Temporary Disability Insurance/Family Leave Insurance program
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Private Plans (fully or self-insured) - Requires custom policies.
💡 Best Practice: Employers with a private plan should customize the existing policy to meet their state approved requirements and change the policy type to Company to show the policy is owned by the employer.
Employer Coverage Requirements
Excluded Employers
Refer to Legislative guidance for details.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Excluded employers are not covered under the law and may need to disable the policy in the platform to keep it from rendering. Discuss decisions with legal counsel for best approach.
Employee Eligibility
This policy is a state paid leave program that may have eligibility criteria tied to wages/earnings that are not available in the platform. Employers should follow the state's determination for the wage replacement policy.
💡 Best Practice: Follow the state's decision so the policy status matches the state's determination for eligibility.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Overrides in eligibility may be required if the state determines the employee has not met the eligibility requirements necessary for paid benefits.
Work State Requirements
📝 Configuration Note: Policy is configured with a work state of New Jersey - meaning all employees with that work state will be reviewed for eligibility.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Eligibility may need to be overridden if the work state for the employee is different from the policy configured work state, based on the employer's review of the employee's work locations.
Eligibility Exceptions
Excluded Employees
Refer to Legislative guidance for details.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Manually override eligibility from pass to fail for excluded employees.
Leave Entitlements and Duration
💡 Best Practice: Follow the state's decision so the policy status matches the state's determination for benefits.
Entitlement Overview
Each NJ-STD absence reason carries an entitlement of up to 26 work weeks, measured per case.
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Employee Health Condition
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Pregnancy/Maternity
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Domestic Violence
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Safe Leave
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Employee Quarantine
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Marrow Donor
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Organ Donor
Entitlement Rules
✅ Automatic: AbsenceSoft automatically tracks entitlement against the 26-week maximum for each case.
📝 Configuration Note: New Jersey law pays TDI benefits in calendar weeks/days. AbsenceSoft's policy is configured in Work Weeks to support Payroll Calculations tracking and to accommodate reduced-schedule nuances; this approximates the statutory calendar-based accounting.
📝 Configuration Note: Domestic Violence and Safe Leave under NJ-STD are configured with a Self relationship only, addressing the medical impact of the employee being a victim. Non-medical needs (relocation, court proceedings, safety planning, victim advocacy services) should be opened under NJ-FTD instead, selecting Self as the relationship.
📝 Configuration Note: Domestic Violence and Safe Leave under NJ-STD are treated as an ordinary medically certified disability, subject to the standard 26-week per-case entitlement above. No incident-date timing limitation applies to this policy; a separate 20-day/12-month unpaid-leave window applies under NJ-FTD, not NJ-STD.
📝 Configuration Note: Employee Quarantine absence reason is triggered by a quarantine or isolation order from a healthcare provider or public health authority. The platform does not know when this order is in effect.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Users selecting the Employee Quarantine absence reason must confirm outside of the platform whether an order is in effect and if the absence reason applies. If the reason does not apply, manual intervention may be necessary to close the case and change to a more suitable absence reason.
📝 Configuration Note: Pregnancy/Maternity is configured to end the policy period based on the Bonding Start Date event.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Update the case information to reflect the correct bonding start date so the Pregnancy/Maternity policy period ends correctly.
How Leave Can Be Taken
Refer to Legislative guidance for details.
Intermittent Leave Requirements
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: AbsenceSoft's policy does not distinguish between the 84-day (12-week) continuous maximum and the 56-day (8-week) intermittent maximum, and the platform's intermittent-restriction feature cannot currently enforce the state's required one-day minimum increment. Leave managers should track intermittent usage against the 56-day cap manually and deny or override once the cap is reached.
Pay and Benefits
Refer to Legislative guidance for details.
Benefit Coordination
📝 Configuration Note: AbsenceSoft's policy is not configured to exclude work-related disabilities, as exclusion is not always automatic and instead situational. Configuring an exclusion on this policy would prevent proper handling of these cases until the workers' compensation claim is resolved.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Case managers should review any workers' compensation situations individually and determine how to proceed based on the state's recommendation.
💡 Best Practice: Employers may be required to provide information to the state if the employee is receiving workers' compensation benefits to ensure wage replacement is correctly being administered.
Elimination Period
📝 Configuration Note: Elimination periods have not been configured due to the state's nuanced approach noted in the Legislative Guidance.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Elimination periods should be recorded in the platform based on the state's determination, including retroactively waiving the waiting period once a case reaches 22 days or longer.
💡 Best Practice: Employers make note of any waiting periods in notes rather than making policy decisions to ensure proper tracking of both pay and job-protection benefits.
Relapse
📝 Configuration Note: This policy is configured to allow relapse within 14 days of the end of a prior period of disability for the same or related condition.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Reopen existing cases as 'Relapse' for claim continuation. The state determines if the case does not qualify as a relapse event.
Interaction with other Policies
Refer to Legislative guidance for details.
📝 Configuration Note: NJ-STD is not concurrent with New Jersey Paid Family Leave Insurance (NJ-FTD). An employee may not receive benefits under both policies at the same time.
Required Paperwork/Communication
Refer to Legislative guidance for details.
📝 Configuration Note: AbsenceSoft provides core paperwork for NJ-STD through the NJ Temporary Disability Insurance (NJSTATEDISABILITYBENEFITS) paperwork/attachment. Paperwork is configured to be sent as part of the Employee Eligibility packet. Employers with private plans may have different requirements causing the need for a custom paperwork attachment be created with employer specific details.
NJ-STD certification forms are not available in the platform and are made available to the employee through the Division of Temporary Disability Insurance/Family Leave Insurance program’s online portal.❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: Updates to existing paperwork items can occur. When updates happen, they are automatically applied to paperwork unless the client has customized. Clients with customizations on the relevant paperwork will need to review to determine how to adopt the new paperwork and apply any new customizations to the updated paperwork manually.
Payroll Calculations
New Jersey does not currently have a Base Wage Calculation Method built into Payroll Calculations.
❌ Manual Action or Tracking Required: New Jersey determines how many "base weeks" fall within a quarter using a methodology that changes from quarter to quarter, and the state does not publish that determination until after the fact. Because there is no published, stable formula to build against, this policy cannot use a standard AbsenceSoft-maintained base wage method.
To use this policy with Payroll Calculations, it must be customized. Contact AbsenceSoft support for a recommendation on configuring a custom base wage formula that closely approximates New Jersey's methodology. The recommended approximation uses a fixed 13 weeks per quarter, rather than New Jersey's rotating, retroactively-determined base week count.
Need Help?
For questions about policy configuration or case management, contact your AbsenceSoft support team or consult the Legislative Guidance for compliance details.