U.S. Employment Law for HR
Navigate high-stakes compliance traps in day-to-day HR operations. Learn to classify roles defensibly, coordinate overlapping medical leaves, and manage legally sound workplace exits.
Like Duolingo, but for U.S. Employment Law for HR. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Classification and Verification Pitfalls and Protected Absences, Accommodation, and Exit Protocols. It assumes you already know the basics.
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Key ideas in U.S. Employment Law for HR
- Under the FLSA, job titles carry zero legal weight in determining exemption status
- An exemption requires meeting all three: salary level, salary basis, and primary duties
- Duties tests evaluate actual daily job functions rather than written job descriptions
- Salaried exempt staff must receive a guaranteed minimum salary regardless of work quantity or quality
- An actual practice of improper pay deductions destroys the salary basis exemption
- Exemption loss can expand to all employees in the same job class under the same managers
- Primary duty focuses on the main, most significant responsibility an employee performs
- Spending over 50% of working time on routine routine labor strongly suggests non-exempt status
- Executive exemption requires input into hiring, firing, or promotion decisions
- Work not requested but suffered or permitted must be counted as compensable time
- Employers who know or should know an employee is working off-the-clock must pay for it
- Rule violations should be handled through discipline, never by withholding earned pay
- The FLSA sets a federal compliance floor; state laws can establish more protective rules
- When federal and state laws differ, employers must follow the rule most favorable to the worker
- States like California and New York enforce quantitative duty tests and higher salary thresholds
- The employee must complete Section 1 no later than their first day of work for pay.
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives U.S. Employment Law for HR the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
To properly classify an employee as exempt under the FLSA, how many parts of the legal test must be satisfied?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where U.S. Employment Law for HR takes you
- 1
Classification and Verification Pitfalls
- FLSA Exemptions Beyond Job Titles
- Work Authorization and Form I-9 Audits
- 2
Protected Absences, Accommodation, and Exit Protocols
- The FMLA, ADA, and PWFA Matrix
- Defensible Exits, Severance, and Separation Compliance
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
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Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
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- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
U.S. Employment Law for HR is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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