Live, Cohort-Based, One-Hour Sessions
How We Teach
These sessions come from the same place our manager training does: decades of employment law practice, thousands of real workplace situations, and a firm belief that people learn best when they’re working through problems, not listening to lectures.
Every masterclass is built around vignettes pulled from actual cases and workplace scenarios. Participants work through them in real time, in breakout rooms and facilitated exercises, testing their instincts and sharpening their judgment before the stakes are real. The facilitators aren’t academics. They’re the employment lawyers companies call when things go wrong, and they bring that perspective into every session.
The format is one hour, one topic, small cohorts. Interactive throughout. No slide decks read aloud, no passive viewing. You’ll leave with practical language you can use, frameworks you can apply the same week, and a clearer sense of where the risk actually sits in your day-to-day work.
Below are eighteen sessions in the current HR Masterclass catalog. Each one is designed to stand alone, so you can build a learning track around your team’s priorities or take them individually as needs come up.
1. 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.
2. Documentation That Actually Holds Up
Most performance files look fine until someone challenges them. We break down what makes documentation stick in a real dispute: specificity, consistency, timing. And why the records HR thinks are solid often aren’t.
3. Handling Accommodation Requests
The interactive process sounds simple until you’re in the middle of one. This session covers how to assess requests, navigate gray-area medical situations, determine undue hardship, and avoid the mistakes that turn a routine accommodation into a disability claim.
4. Managing Employee Leave
FMLA, ADA, state leave laws, company policy. They overlap, they conflict, and they change. We walk through how to manage concurrent obligations, handle return-to-work issues, and stop small leave missteps from becoming systemic exposure.
5. 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 lands in front of a jury.
6. 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. We show HR how to spot the red flags before a single employee complaint turns into a collective action.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. Workplace Harassment: Prevention and Response
When a harassment complaint lands on your desk, the clock starts running. We cover 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.
11. 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 HR decisions create exposure and what it takes to break the causal chain.
12. Workplace Privacy and Monitoring
Cameras, email monitoring, GPS tracking, AI-driven surveillance tools. The technology moves faster than the law. We walk through what’s permissible, what’s risky, and how to build monitoring policies that protect the company without inviting litigation.
13. Substance Use and Impairment at Work
Marijuana legalization, prescription medication, remote work. The old playbook on workplace substance use doesn’t work anymore. This session covers how to handle suspected impairment, update your policies, and navigate the intersection of safety, accommodation, and enforcement.
14. 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. We cover what’s enforceable, how to structure agreements that hold up, and what HR should be doing before, during, and after an exit.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. Complaint Triage: When to Escalate and How
Not every complaint needs an investigation, but every complaint needs a response. This session gives HR a decision framework for evaluating what comes in the door: what to handle internally, when to bring in counsel, and how to document the judgment call either way.
19. When to Escalate: A Guide for HR Professionals
Not every workplace issue needs to go up the chain, but some absolutely do. This workshop gives HR professionals a practical framework for recognizing when a situation requires outside counsel, senior leadership involvement, or a shift in how it’s being handled.
20. California Employment Law: What Every HR Professional Needs to Know
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.
SHRM & HRCI Credit
Select sessions in the HR Masterclass Series are approved for SHRM and HRCI recertification credits. Eligible courses are noted at registration. If you’re building toward your certification hours, this is continuing education that actually applies to the work you do every day.
Manager Training Programs