Don't Waste the Chaos
Don't Waste the Chaos is a weekly podcast for small business owners and HR professionals who want practical, no-nonsense people strategy.
Host Kerri M. Roberts is an HR strategist, consultant, and founder of Salt & Light Advisors with 20+ years of experience turning reactive HR into proactive systems.
Each Tuesday, she breaks down hiring, onboarding, compliance, culture, and leadership - the kind of strategy that typically costs thousands in consulting, delivered in under 40 minutes.
If you're managing people and want to do it better, this show is for you.
New episode every Tuesday.
Learn more about the show and Kerri at www.kerrimroberts.com.
Don't Waste the Chaos
How to Handle Employee Leave Without Getting Sued (FMLA, ADA & Bereavement Explained) | HR Systems Series Ep. 6
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One employee asks for time off and you say yes. Another asks three weeks later and you say no. Neither of you realizes you just created a discrimination claim. In Part 6 of the HR Foundations series, Kerri breaks down leave management — the operational area where she sees the most lawsuits.
Leave management isn't the flashiest HR topic, but it's where Kerri sees the most lawsuits land on small and mid-sized businesses — and almost always unintentionally.
In this episode, she walks through everything an owner, operator, or manager needs to know to handle leave without creating legal exposure:
What you'll learn:
- The federal and state leave laws that apply to your business — and the threshold calculations small employers get wrong
- FMLA basics: who qualifies, what it actually covers, and the three most common mistakes Kerri sees in the field
- Why she recommends one leave bank instead of two (and what happens to honesty when you split them)
- How the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and ADA quietly apply at just 15 employees
- Intermittent FMLA — the hardest leave to track and the easiest to mess up
- Why inconsistent leave decisions are the fastest path to a discrimination claim, even when you mean well
- The interactive process under ADA, explained without the legal jargon
- What to document for every leave event (and why benefits records stay separate from performance files)
- The bereavement policy fix you can put in place this week
Your one action this week: Look at your bereavement policy. How many days? For which relationships? Who approves it? If you can't answer consistently, that's your first leave policy to write.
This is Part 6 of the 13-part HR Foundations series. If you're just joining, go back to Part 1 — Kerri's building your HR foundation episode by episode.
Key topics
FMLA, ADA, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, USERRA, jury duty leave, voting leave, sick leave laws, PTO policy, bereavement, intermittent leave, reasonable accommodations, retaliation claims, discrimination claims, leave documentation, manager accountability
Resources mentioned
- Book: The HR Easy Button by Kerri Roberts — available on Amazon
- Course: HR Foundations — saltandlightadvisors.com/hr-foundations
- Free Mini HR Audit:saltandlightadvisors.com/hr-audit
- Work with Kerri:saltandlightadvisors.com/contact
Coming up next
Part 7 — Performance & Feedback: Setting expectations, giving real feedback, and handling underperformance before it becomes a termination.
Connect with Kerri
- Website: https://saltandlightadvisors.com
- Book a call: https://saltandlightadvisors.com/contact
- Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen — Apple, Spotify, or YouTube — and share this episode with a peer or office manager who's helping run HR at a small business.
