Tilt Essentials vs Tilt Professional: Which Leave Management Solution is Right for My Needs?

Emma Linfield on October 13, 2025

No two companies are alike, and neither are their leave management needs. Whether your organization is just moving past spreadsheets or navigating complex, multi-state programs, we have a solution that fits.

Choosing the right platform is the first step toward a more efficient, compliant, and compassionate leave program. Here’s a look at how Tilt Essentials and Tilt Professional can help you.

Tilt Essentials: Modern Leave Management Made Simple

For HR teams ready to move beyond manual tracking and endless email chains, Tilt Essentials provides the right tools to manage leave confidently. It offers a modern, human-centered experience that automates workflows and provides centralized visibility.
Tilt Essentials simplifies complex leave management, ensuring compliance with core programs like FMLA, ADA, and PWFA. It gives HR leaders the control they need without the operational burden.

Tilt Essentials delivers:

Compliance confidence across core leave programs.
Automation and visibility through HR and manager dashboards.
Built-in guidance for HR, managers, and employees.
Human support from Tilt’s Customer and Leave Success Teams.

This plan is ideal for small to mid-market organizations with a moderate number of leaves and no state leave PFML programs to consider. It’s the fastest way to bring clarity and care to your leave program without the heavy lift.

Tilt Professional: Complete Leave Experience Management at Scale

For HR leaders managing a high volume of leaves or navigating complex multi-state and paid family and medical leave (PFML) programs, Tilt Professional is the full-suite platform built for scale.

Tilt Professional includes all the features of the Essentials tier, plus advanced capabilities for all leave types, including military, personal, and state PFML. It offers deeper customization and dedicated support to handle every aspect of leave seamlessly.

With Tilt Professional, you get:

End-to-end compliance for all leave types and state PFML programs
Standard and Premium integrations with your HRIS
Automated payroll calculations and reports
Customized leave plans and forms tailored to your organization
Dedicated Customer Success Manager
Leave Success Pod for white-glove support

Tilt Professional is best for teams that need integrations, payroll automation, and expert partnership to handle even the most complex leave landscapes – giving HR total control and peace of mind.

Finding Your Fit: Essentials vs. Professional

Feature

Essentials

Professional

Core Leave Types (FMLA, ADA, PWFA)

Company Leave Policies

Automated Workflows & Templates

HR & Manager Dashboards

Secure Data Handling (2FA, SFTP)

Employee & Manager Guidance

Leave Success Support

All Leave Types

PFML State Programs

Payroll Calculations & Reporting

Integrations

Custom Plan Steps & Forms

Dedicated Customer Success Support

Your Next Step to Better Leave Management

If you’re ready to bring clarity, compliance, and care to your leave program, both Tilt Essentials and Tilt Professional are built to help. Every plan gives you more than software—it gives you a partner dedicated to supporting your team and your employees every step of the way.

Meet with a member of our team today to learn which solution is right for your team.

Minnesota’s New Paid Family & Medical Leave: What HR Needs to Know

Emma Linfield on September 29, 2025

Minnesota’s Paid Family & Medical Leave (PFML) program is coming January 1, 2026 — and it’s going to change how employers across the state support their teams.

If you’re in HR, here’s the breakdown of what’s changing, what you’ll need to do, and how to get ready.

The Basics

Here’s what Minnesota’s PFML law includes:

12 weeks for an employee’s own medical needs (serious health condition).
12 weeks for family needs (bonding, caregiving, military, or safety-related leave).
Up to 20 weeks total per year if both types of leave are needed.
Wage replacement: Employees get between 55–90% of their usual wages (capped at a state maximum).
Job protection: After 90 days of employment, workers can return to their job (or an equivalent one).
Health insurance continues while on leave.

Coverage is broad — if your employees work in Minnesota (even part-time or remote with a Minnesota home base), they’re probably covered.

What This Means for Employees

This is not just a new benefit — it’s a new compliance requirement. Here’s what HR teams need to focus on:

1. Payroll & Contributions

Starting January 2026, employers and employees will split the cost (roughly 0.88% of wages total). Employers with fewer than 30 employees only withhold the employee share (no employer contribution is required).
Be sure your payroll system is updated to handle deductions and reporting.

2. Notices & Employee Communication

By December 1, 2025, you’ll need to post a state-issued notice in your workplace and share written details with employees.
Notices must be available in the languages your employees speak.

3. Leave Policies & Coordination

Review your current PTO, sick time, parental leave, and short-term disability policies.
Employees cannot be required to burn through PTO before PFML — but they can choose to use it to “top up” pay.
PFML will often run at the same time as FMLA, so policies should clearly explain how they overlap.

4. Manager & HR Training

Managers need to know what to say when someone asks about leave.
HR needs clear processes for handling requests, certifications, and return-to-work planning.

Key Dates to Watch

Now–Fall 2025: Audit your leave policies, train staff, update payroll systems.
Nov. 10, 2025: Deadline to apply for a private plan if you want to operate outside the state plan starting Jan. 1, 2026.
Dec. 1, 2025: Post required employee notices.
Jan. 1, 2026: Start payroll deductions + employees can begin using PFML.
April 30, 2026: First quarterly premium payment due.

Common HR Questions

Q: Do we have to keep benefits going while someone’s out?
Yes — health insurance and other benefits continue during PFML leave.

Q: Can we supplement state benefits with our own pay?
Yes, but combined benefits can’t exceed an employee’s normal wages.

Q: Do small businesses have to participate?
Yes — the law applies to nearly all employers in Minnesota.

How Tilt Can Help

Rolling out a statewide leave program is a big lift — and PFML will add complexity to already complicated leave processes. That’s where Tilt comes in.

Tilt helps HR teams by:

Automating leave requests, tracking, and documentation.
Staying up-to-date on compliance, including the new Minnesota PFML regulations.
Giving employees a self-service hub so they can see their leave status, paperwork, and pay.
Providing payroll calculations and support, and in some cases integrating with payroll and HRIS to make contributions and reporting even easier.
Offering reporting and analytics so you understand leave usage and costs.

Instead of scrambling with spreadsheets and state forms, you can focus on supporting your people while Tilt handles the admin.

Book a demo to see how Tilt can simplify Minnesota PFML for your team.

Leave Deserves Better: Why It’s Time for a New Category in Leave Management

Emma Linfield on September 18, 2025

When HR leaders talk about their biggest challenges, “leave” often comes with a sigh. Not because supporting employees during life’s most vulnerable moments isn’t important – it’s because the systems and processes surrounding leave have been stuck in the past. For too long, leave has been managed through outdated outsourcing models and tools that remove HR from the experience, mask compliance risks, and leave employees feeling like a number in a system.

It’s no wonder many companies describe leave as “chaotic,” “confusing,” or “compliance roulette.”

But here’s the thing: leave is too important to be handled this way. It touches moments that define lives – new beginnings, sudden crises, long recoveries, and everything in between. And when companies fall short, the impact isn’t just administrative – it undermines culture, damages trust, and pushes talent out the door.

That’s why we believe leave deserves its own category: Leave Experience Management (LXM).

The Illusion of Easy

Traditionally outsourced models often sell an “easy button” for HR. Just hand over leave and it will be taken care of. But beneath that illusion lies a reality HR leaders know too well:

Employees are left in the dark about their status.
Managers struggle to support team members without clear visibility.
HR loses control of compliance, all while the risk is still theirs to carry.

As Jen Henderson, Founder & CEO of Tilt, puts it: “Leave gone wrong ruins lives.” That’s not hyperbole – it’s the real consequence when an employee facing a health crisis, a new child, or an unexpected family emergency feels unsupported by the workplace they’ve trusted.

Listening to HR, Building for People

After managing more than 32,000 leaves, we’ve learned that HR teams don’t actually want to be removed from the process entirely. What they want is relief from the endless paperwork, compliance traps, and repetitive questions that come with leave administration.

“What made now the time for us,” says Jen, “putting it very simply, we were listening to our customers. They were telling us, we would really like for this to be less painful. The wishlist was curated and vetted and verified, and we looked at this list of jobs to be done and thought, man… this feels like the designing of a whole new category.”

That new category is Leave Experience Management (LXM).

Why Leave Experience, and Why Now?

Three forces are colliding in HR today:

Shifting Employee Expectations – Employees expect transparency, empathy, and personalization in every interaction at work, including leave.
Mounting Complexity – State-by-state regulations, overlapping federal laws, and shifting organizational policies make compliance a minefield.
Technological Breakthroughs – AI and automation can finally take on the heavy lifting, freeing HR to focus on the moments that truly matter.

As Jen explains: “We kind of saw all the components of this recipe, and we’re like – we can do this. We can do this now, so let’s move quickly.”

Designing for Wow, Not Parity

This isn’t about copying what’s already in the market. In fact, Tilt isn’t interested in feature parity at all.

“I almost wish I could calculate the number of times somebody says, wow,” says Jen. “That’s the bar we’re holding all of this functionality against. We want users to look at a feature and say, I never knew you could do that before. This changes the game of leave.”

That’s the opportunity with LXM: to move past the patchwork solutions and create something that inspires confidence, clarity, and yes – delight.

What LXM Makes Possible

At its core, LXM is about shifting leave from being a burden to becoming a strategic advantage. Here’s how:

Own Your Culture – HR remains central to the leave experience, ensuring employees feel supported by people they know, not faceless systems.
AI Handles the Admin, Not the Human – Automation takes care of paperwork, compliance, and repetitive questions, while HR builds trust through personal conversations.
Compliance with Confidence – Instead of outsourcing risk into a black box, HR gets visibility, transparency, and knowledge at their fingertips.

The result? Employees experience clarity and empathy when they need it most, while HR teams gain confidence and control.

The Future of Leave Experience Management

This moment in HR is historic. For the first time, we have the technology to hyper-personalize leave, the market demand to move past outdated systems, and the cultural imperative to treat leave as a cornerstone of employee well-being.

As Jen puts it: “There are a lot of companies in this country that don’t have leave support. Our intent is to widen the aperture, to help more organizations who have been inundated with legislation, complexity, and shifting employee expectations. They need help! And we want to meet them where they’re at, with configurability that uniquely solves the problem.”

That’s the heart of LXM: creating access, clarity, and humanity where it hasn’t existed before.

Introducing Tilt: The Leave Experience Platform

Tilt exists to humanize the leave experience at work. We built the first platform designed for LXM because we believe leave shouldn’t be an afterthought or an inconvenience. It should be trusted, seamless, and human.

By automating the admin with AI and surfacing the right guidance at the right time, Tilt gives HR visibility and control while keeping employees supported every step of the way. With Tilt, leave is no longer a disruption – it’s a defining moment for culture and care.

Leave deserves better. HR deserves better. Employees deserve better. That’s why Tilt is here.

The Modern HR Leader’s Guide to Leave That Works

Emma Linfield on July 15, 2025

The Modern HR Leader’s Guide to Leave That Works

Leave isn’t just policy—it’s people. Here’s how to lead with both.

Leave of absence moments are defining ones. For your employees, they often mark life’s most vulnerable chapters—new beginnings, deep losses, health crises, or caregiving responsibilities. For HR, these moments are where trust is built, or broken.

Here’s what’s inside:

A breakdown of 3 of the biggest challenges in leave management—and how to solve them
Real examples of leave gone right (and wrong) to help you avoid common missteps
Guidance for fair performance and compensation decisions during and after leave
Simple, actionable steps you can take today to build a more human leave experience

More Than Compliance: The Evolution of Leave Management

Emma Linfield on April 16, 2025

More Than Compliance: The Evolution of Leave Management

Why the future of HR depends on a smarter, more human-centered approach to leave

In today’s workplace, how you manage employee leave says everything about your culture, priorities, and operational maturity. This eBook unpacks why forward-thinking organizations are moving beyond check-the-box compliance—and how strategic leave management is quietly becoming a key driver of retention, performance, and business continuity. Inside, you’ll find:

✔️Real-world insights
✔️Evaluation Checklist: Your Guide to Choosing the Right Leave Management Partner
✔️Case Study from Tilt Customer, Corey Glover at Varo Bank
✔️And a practical roadmap to turn leave into a true business advantage.

“It’s a partnership. I’m not just handing the entire process over. It’s important to me to make sure that leave is running smoothly like it should, and together with Tilt it truly is.”

Corey Glover
People Operations Analyst,
Varo Bank

Tilt Essentials vs Tilt Professional: Which Leave Management Solution is Right for My Needs?

Tilt Essentials: Modern Leave Management Made Simple

Tilt Professional: Complete Leave Experience Management at Scale

Finding Your Fit: Essentials vs. Professional

Feature

Essentials

Professional

Your Next Step to Better Leave Management

Minnesota’s New Paid Family & Medical Leave: What HR Needs to Know

The Basics

What This Means for Employees

Key Dates to Watch

Common HR Questions

How Tilt Can Help

Leave Deserves Better: Why It’s Time for a New Category in Leave Management

The Illusion of Easy

Listening to HR, Building for People

Why Leave Experience, and Why Now?

Designing for Wow, Not Parity

What LXM Makes Possible

The Future of Leave Experience Management

Introducing Tilt: The Leave Experience Platform

The Modern HR Leader’s Guide to Leave That Works

The Modern HR Leader’s Guide to Leave That Works

Leave isn’t just policy—it’s people. Here’s how to lead with both.

More Than Compliance: The Evolution of Leave Management

More Than Compliance: The Evolution of Leave Management

Why the future of HR depends on a smarter, more human-centered approach to leave

Resources

Life at Tilt

Legal & Compliance Hub

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