Growing Pains: Employers with 50 Employees or More, Are You Prepared to Administer Family Medical Leave Act Requests According to Strict Guidelines?

Why Should You Attend:

There are many laws and regulations that impact small businesses and many new laws that will emerge as we continue to focus on workplace and employee rights. This course will provide small and large businesses as well as HR professionals who are responsible for ensuring their company has the resources necessary to be compliant with current and new laws and regulations. It is essential to for both small and large business to develop initiatives to be compliant as part of their risk management strategy.

It is important to understand that most regulatory agencies were created to support employees and protect them from companies who willfully violate their rights and take advantage of them for the company’s financial gain. However, most companies are committed to build their companies and create a good environment and culture for employees to work in. Most laws that are violated by small companies are based on lack of knowledge and resources which can unwittingly be a risk for them.

Moreover, there are employees who take advantage of companies by making workplace allegations of wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment and/or claims that their rights have been violated. It is not hard for these claims to be settled out of a court process with compensation arrangements to respond to these claims.

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• What are the current regulations that impact small and large businesses
• How can your company mitigate the regulation guidelines and notice deadlines for FMLA and MLA?
• Should you outsource your FMLA processing or leave it in house?
• What are the new regulations that impact small and large businesses for 2016-2018?
• Recognizing what laws and regulations are a focus for regulatory agencies
• What regulations impact federal contractors?
• What should be included in an employee handbook?
• What resources are available for small businesses and HR professionals?
• What regulations should companies be aware of?
• The impact of regulations that are under the radar in certain industries
• Establishing resources for small businesses
• Best practices for ensuring compliance of workplace laws and regulations

Who Will Benefit:

• CEOs
• CFOs
• Board of Directors
• Program Managers, Office Managers (with HR roles)
• HR Workplace Compliance Professionals (Officers, Directors, Managers and Specialists)
• Senior HR Professionals
• Operations Professionals
• Anyone interested in learning more about workplace compliance regulations

Margie Pacheco Faulk
Sr HR Consultant, HR Compliance Solutions

Margie Faulk, PHR, SHRM-CP is a senior level human resources professional with over 14 years of HR management and compliance experience. She currently provides compliance services for a large global data protection technologies company with international and multi-state locations. A former compliance officer for a defense contracting technologies firm with a military base in Hawaii, Ms. Faulk has worked as an HR and compliance advisor for major corporations and small businesses across various industries.

She is currently working on international compliance initiatives like international privacy issues, drafting and implementing international policies, reviewing and amending global employment policies, cross-border reductions in force and restructurings, multi-jurisdictional employee investigations, global diversity programs, expatriate legal issues and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Ms. Faulk holds professional human resources certification (PHR) from the HR Certification Institution (HRCI) and SHRM-CP certification from Society for Human Resources Management. She is also a member of the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics (SCCE).

Topic Background:

Regulatory agencies like Department of Labor (DOL) is responsible for regulating the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and other labor regulations. Organizations must be aware of the fines and penalties possible when violating FMLA. This is one of the most critical of regulations since it is widely researched that DOL is increasing additional investigators to ensure that small business and large are compliant. In addition to DOL, FMLA , the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Wage & Hour Division and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are just a few of the regulatory agencies that have new laws impacting small and emerging business. Are you aware of all the FMLA guidelines and notification deadlines? Did you know that some of the illnesses not covered by FMLA may be covered by the American with Disabilities Act (ADA)? Did you know that you can fire employees if they have performance issues and are on FMLA?

Small businesses with 50 employees or more are expected to follow all the existing and new workplace laws and regulations that are consistent with their number of employees. In 2016, there were over 26 new laws and revised regulations put in place, the highest number of laws and regulations created in one year. Both types of laws and regulations impact small and large businesses nationwide. Most small businesses do not have the HR resources to be on top of all the laws that can impact a company. Moreover, even savvy HR professionals in emerging small businesses may not have the capacity and time to focus on the existing and changing laws as they handle day to day workplace responsibilities. These HR professionals are working hard on day to day tactical responsibilities as they attempt to be the gatekeepers of employment laws and ensure workplace compliance.

Based on the HR industry standards, there should be approximately one full time HR professional for every 100 employees. The challenge with this ratio is that it should be based on how solid the company is and are all their ducks in a row regarding compliance regulations. It is critical for companies to take seriously all the employment laws that can impact their company and identify those laws that can make them vulnerable to audits from IRS, DHS, DOL, Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Wage & Hour Division, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and just to name a few.

It is important to note that prior to 2009, most of the regulatory entities were not communicating with each other. What was a focus for the (DOL) was not the focus for the (IRS), (DHS) or (ICE), the enforcement arm of the DHS). There are networking communication streams between regulatory agencies which has capitalized on pursuing violations by regulatory entities. There has since been a huge uptick of collaboration between DHS and IRS when it came to workplace audits.

Follow us :