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Employment Law Basics for HR Professionals
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Employment Law Basics for HR Professionals

Learn employment law fundamentals, compliance watch-outs, and practical HR risk-management strategies.
Created byGretchen Lockard
Last updated 9/2026
English

What you'll learn

  • Recognize common employment-law issues and identify when an HR situation requires further legal review.
  • Apply a practical Legal Radar framework to employment decisions involving hiring, pay, leave, discipline, and termination.
  • Understand the foundational concepts of at-will employment, employee classification, FLSA wage-and-hour requirements, and federal employment protections.
  • Identify common compliance watch-outs involving discrimination, retaliation, accommodations, leave, hiring, background checks, pay transparency, and marijuana t
  • Recognize how state and local laws can create different obligations for employees working in different jurisdictions.
  • Know how to research employment-law questions using authoritative federal, state, and local sources.
  • Identify situations where HR should pause a decision and involve employment counsel.
  • Use practical checklists and decision frameworks to approach employment-law questions with greater confidence and consistency.

Course content

12 sections • 12 lectures • 45m total length

  • Introduction3:52

Requirements

  • No prior legal or employment-law experience is required. This course is designed for learners who have an interest in HR, people management, or workplace compliance. A basic understanding of workplace or HR practices is helpful, but not required. Students should be prepared to think through real-world HR scenarios and use the course frameworks to identify questions, research applicable requirements, and recognize when an issue should be escalated to qualified legal counsel.

Description

Employment law can feel overwhelming—especially when you're the HR professional, manager, or small business owner who is expected to know what to do.

This course is designed to make employment law more practical.

Employment Law Basics for HR Professionals gives you a foundation in the employment laws and concepts HR professionals encounter most often, while focusing on something even more important: recognizing when an everyday HR situation may have a legal dimension.

You will learn the fundamentals of at-will employment, employee versus independent contractor classification, temporary workers, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), wage and hour requirements, Title VII, the ADA, ADEA, PWFA, FMLA, EEOC requirements, OSHA, NLRA, ERISA, USERRA, I-9 requirements, EEO-1 reporting, and other important employment-law concepts.

But this course goes beyond simply reviewing laws.

You'll also explore practical HR watch-outs that often create compliance questions in the real world, including multi-state employment, pay transparency, salary-history restrictions, ban-the-box and background checks, THC and marijuana considerations, final paycheck requirements, PTO payout, paid sick leave, accommodations, retaliation, remote employees, and overlapping leave obligations.

Throughout the course, you'll use The HR Edit's Legal Radar approach to slow down risky decisions, ask the right questions, research the applicable rules, and recognize when an issue should be escalated to qualified legal counsel.

You'll work through realistic HR scenarios involving hiring, compensation, leave, accommodation, employee relations, remote work, termination, and other common workplace situations.

This course is educational and is not legal advice. Employment laws vary by jurisdiction and change frequently. The goal is not to turn you into an employment attorney. The goal is to help you recognize when employment law matters, and know what to do next.

By the end of the course, you'll have a practical framework you can use when an HR question makes you think: "Wait...what do we need to consider here?"

Who this course is for:

  • This course is designed for: • HR professionals who are new to the field or want to strengthen their employment-law foundation • HR generalists and HR business partners who regularly advise managers on employee-related decisions • People managers who want a practical understanding of the employment-law issues that can arise in everyday management • Small business owners and leaders who are responsible for HR decisions without an in-house legal or HR team • Recruiters and talent professionals who want to better understand hiring-related compliance considerations • Professionals transitioning into HR who want to build practical employment-law knowledge The course is especially useful for anyone who needs to recognize potential employment-law issues, ask better questions, and know when a situation requires additional research or legal counsel.

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