For HR Professionals

Masterclass Catalog

A Sampling of Recent Masterclasses

• Making and Executing Termination Decisions

  Terminations go sideways when the decision gets ahead of the process. This session walks through how to evaluate risk, build the file, choose the right moment, and execute cleanly. The difference between a defensible separation and a six-figure claim is usually one or two missed steps.

• Documentation that Holds Up

  Most performance files look fine until someone challenges them. This session breaks down what makes documentation stick in a real dispute — specificity, consistency, timing — and why the records HR thinks are solid often aren’t.

• Managing Employee Leave

  FMLA, ADA, state leave laws, company policy — they overlap, they conflict, and they change. This session covers how to manage concurrent obligations, handle return-to-work issues, and stop small missteps from becoming systemic exposure.

• Conducting Internal Investigations

  A badly run investigation can do more damage than the underlying complaint. This session covers how to scope it, who to interview, what to document, and how to reach conclusions that hold up whether the matter stays internal or ends up in front of a jury.

• Wage & Hour and Overtime Risk

  Classification errors, off-the-clock work, rounding practices, comp time. Wage and hour exposure adds up fast and spreads across entire teams. This session shows HR how to spot the red flags before a single complaint turns into a collective action.

• Independent Contractor vs. Employee Classification

  The line between contractor and employee is narrower than most companies think, and regulators are paying closer attention. This session breaks down the real-world tests, common arrangements that fail them, and how to evaluate your current relationships before someone else does.

• Hiring: Legal Risks and Practical Boundaries

  The hiring process is full of exposure most companies don’t see until it’s too late. Interview questions that cross lines, job postings that invite challenges, background check processes that violate state law. We cover how to build a hiring process that’s both effective and defensible.

• Managing Toxic or High-Risk Employees

  The high performer who’s also a walking liability is one of HR’s hardest problems. This session covers how to document the behavior, build a consistent record, and make a defensible decision — even when the business wants to look the other way.

• Workplace Harassment: Prevention and Response

  When a harassment complaint lands on your desk, the clock starts running. This session covers how to evaluate the allegation, protect confidentiality without promising it, manage the accused, and close the loop. How HR handles the first 48 hours usually determines the outcome.

• Retaliation Risk in Everyday HR Decisions

  Retaliation claims don’t come from dramatic acts. They come from a performance review with bad timing, a transfer that looks punitive, a raise that didn’t happen. This session shows how routine decisions create exposure — and what it takes to break the causal chain.

• Workplace Privacy and Monitoring

  Cameras, email monitoring, GPS tracking, AI-driven surveillance tools — the technology moves faster than the law. This session covers what’s permissible, what’s risky, and how to build monitoring policies that protect the company without inviting litigation.

• Substance Use and Impairment at Work

  Marijuana legalization, prescription medication, remote work. The old playbook doesn’t work anymore. This session covers how to handle suspected impairment, update your policies, and navigate the intersection of safety, accommodation, and enforcement.

• Protecting Confidential Information and Trade Secrets

  Restrictive covenants are weaker in more states every year, and employee departures are the highest-risk moment for trade secret loss. This session covers what’s enforceable, what holds up, and what HR should be doing before, during, and after an exit.

• Managing Remote and Hybrid Workforce Issues

  Remote work created a new layer of compliance complexity: multi-state tax triggers, accommodation disputes, wage and hour questions, supervision gaps. This session covers the legal risks that come with distributed teams and how to manage them consistently.

• Workplace Violence and Safety

  Threats, aggressive behavior, domestic violence spillover, active shooter concerns. HR needs a framework before the crisis, not during it. We cover threat assessment, documentation, coordination with security and law enforcement, and the legal obligations most companies overlook.

• Sales Workforce HR Issues

  Sales teams come with their own set of landmines: commission disputes, exempt vs. non-exempt misclassification, restrictive covenants that don’t hold up, and termination decisions complicated by pipeline and payouts. This session is built for HR teams managing revenue-generating headcount.

• When Managers Make It Worse

  Most employment law problems don’t start in HR — they start with a manager who handled something badly. This Masterclass helps HR professionals recognize and respond to the four most common manager failure patterns: not escalating when they should, doing too much and making it worse, treating situations inconsistently, and burying problems that needed to surface.

• When to Escalate: A Guide for HR Professionals

  Not every complaint needs an investigation, and not every issue needs to go up the chain — but every complaint needs a response, and every escalation decision needs to be defensible. This Masterclass gives HR professionals a practical triage framework for evaluating what comes in the door.

• California Employment Law

  If your company has employees in California, the rules are different. From hiring to termination, California imposes requirements that go well beyond federal law and often surprise organizations used to operating in other states. This workshop covers the key differences HR professionals need to understand to stay compliant.

• Union Concerns for Employers

  Organizing campaigns and collective bargaining come with their own legal rules, and the window to respond correctly is narrow. This session covers how to recognize and legally respond to union activity, what collective bargaining actually requires, and how unions use grievances, strikes, and picketing to apply pressure. The employers who navigate this well are the ones who understood the landscape before they needed to.