10 Employment Law Areas Managers Get Wrong Most Often (and What to Do About Them)
Employment Law Fundamentals
Most leave and accommodation mistakes don’t happen because companies don’t know the law. They happen because only part of it is applied.
Increasingly, risk isn’t about whether you followed FMLA. It’s about whether you stopped there.
The Shift HR Leaders Are Being Held To
When an employee raises a medical or pregnancy-related issue, the instinct is to ask: Does this qualify for FMLA?
That question still matters. But on its own, it’s incomplete.
Regulators are focused on whether employers are looking beyond leave eligibility and considering their broader obligations. Treating FMLA as the final answer can leave organizations exposed.
A better question is: What does this employee need to stay working, and what are our obligations beyond leave?
That shift — from eligibility to problem-solving — is where many organizations are still catching up.
Where Things Break Down in Practice
Most compliance gaps don’t come from a lack of policy. They come from how situations are handled in the moment.
A manager hears about a limitation but doesn’t recognize it as a request. An employee exhausts FMLA, and the conversation quietly ends. A policy is applied consistently, but without flexibility. HR is brought in, but too late.
One of the most common breakdowns is stopping the process too soon. When FMLA doesn’t apply — or runs out — that’s often when a different analysis should begin, not end.
Recent enforcement activity highlights how this plays out. In one case, an employer relied on a strict leave policy that required employees to step away from work if they didn’t qualify for FMLA. According to regulators, that approach led to employees being pushed out rather than being evaluated for possible accommodations, skipping a critical step in the process.
It’s a subtle shift, but an important one: policies can’t replace individualized decision-making.
Leave Is Only One Piece of the Puzzle
Laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) have changed expectations in a meaningful way.
Today, compliance requires more than determining whether leave is available. It requires an individualized, interactive approach to understanding what support an employee needs, and how to keep them working when possible.
In many cases, relatively simple adjustments — schedule changes, modified duties, temporary reassignment, or additional breaks — can resolve the issue. And when leave is needed, it may still be required as an accommodation, even outside of FMLA.
The key shift is this: leave is one option — not the default, and not the limit.
The Real Risk Point: Everyday Conversations
Most compliance breakdowns start with a manager navigating a conversation in real time.
These situations rarely sound like formal requests. They sound like:
“I may need some flexibility for a while.”
“I’m having trouble keeping up physically.”
“I’ve been dealing with a medical issue.”
If those signals aren’t recognized, the process never starts, and HR never has the opportunity to guide it.
That’s why compliance increasingly depends on whether managers can recognize these moments, respond appropriately, and bring in HR early enough to get it right.
Moving Beyond Policy-Driven Decisions
Strong policies are essential. But regulators are looking beyond whether policies exist. They’re looking at how they’re applied.
Decisions need to reflect individualized consideration, flexibility where required, and timely escalation. When policies are applied too rigidly, they can unintentionally conflict with legal obligations.
That’s where many well-intentioned organizations run into trouble.
For most organizations, it’s about closing the gap between policy and practice.
That starts with making sure managers can recognize requests, even when they’re informal, and that HR is involved early enough to guide the response. It also means ensuring your processes connect FMLA, ADA, and PWFA obligations, rather than treating them as separate tracks.
These are the areas regulators are focused on, and where risk tends to surface first.
About the Author
Casey Heck is Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Traliant, with more than 15 years of experience leading transformative talent initiatives that align people strategies with business goals. A trusted advisor to executives, she has led large-scale HR transformations and built talent programs that strengthen culture and drive growth.
