FMLA includes time for mandatory overtime: On September 30, 2025, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) issued an opinion letter on calculating the amount of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave available to employees who work schedules that include mandatory overtime. The WHD confirms that mandatory overtime should be included in the calculation for the amount of FMLA leave that employees are entitled to, but that voluntary overtime hours should not be included in the FMLA leave calculation. The WHD said that the conversion of the 12-workweek FMLA leave entitlement to a 504-hour leave entitlement that was described is in accordance with the FMLA’s requirements, as this calculation is consistent with what would be 12 normally scheduled workweeks for an employee working a mandatory 84 hours every 14 days. It also is appropriate under the FMLA regulations to exclude voluntary additional hours that an employee could potentially work from this calculation, the letter said. Additionally, the WHD noted that any voluntary hours an employee is not required to work and does not work due to an FMLA-qualifying reason should not be counted against the employee’s FMLA leave entitlement. Employers cannot require employees to use their FMLA leave when employees do not work the voluntary hours.  Source: Wage and Hour Division, FMLA2025-02-A, Sept. 30, 2025

Do you get workslop? In a recent Harvard Business Review article, researchers at Stanford Social Media Lab and coaching company BetterUp coined the term “workslop” to describe “AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.”  About 40% of the 1,150 full-time US white-collar workers surveyed said they’d encountered workslop in the past month. For many it’s a source of frustration and extra work if they’re stuck with cleaning up a colleague’s slapdash contribution.  Phoned-in work has always been a thing, of course. (It even pre-dates phones.) But AI makes it so much easier, and so much more convincing at first blush — like a block of code that looks impressive until you realize it doesn’t actually work. On the other hand, over half of the workers surveyed admitted to producing workslop. The researchers’ back-of-the-envelope estimate is that workslop costs a typical 10,000-person company about $9 million a year of lost productivity.  While many organizations are pushing hard for employees to adopt AI in their daily workflows, pouring money into new tools and workforce training courses, and setting up guardrails to counter the most obvious risks, few seem to have considered all the ways it might backfire.  Source: Bloomberg

Should workers get equity in the company? Nearly half of employees consider equity compensation, a benefit that gives them a stake in their company's shares, a must-have benefit for a new job and view it as a critical tool to help achieve their retirement goals, according to a recent survey from financial services company Charles Schwab. Adding an effective equity compensation package may be the perfect solution for benefit leaders looking to attract, retain, and engage their workforce.  "Employees want to participate in the growth of the firms that they're active in and employed at," says Andrew Salesky, the stock plan services managing director at Schwab. "Equity compensation benefits provide them with that opportunity." Compensation benefits are hardly a new concept, but they have steadily gained traction over the years. Beyond boosting engagement, Schwab's survey highlighted several other factors that have made the benefit particularly appealing to employees. For example, 37% of employees said equity compensation could help them learn more about investing, 32% said they could alleviate financial stress, and another 32% said they could boost employee morale. Most notably, nearly 40% of employees said equity compensation could help them build or increase their wealth. Source: EBN 10/6/25

How to “job proof” in the AI age: In an interview Linda Nazareth, an economist, futurist, and respected authority on the future of work, said the best way to future-proof your career is to master skills machines can't replicate.  When asked which abilities might be "AI-proof," she said, "Resilience, creativity, empathy, motivation and self-awareness, curiosity, service orientation, and teaching and mentoring. Developing these skills gives you a little bit of armor against all the changes ahead," she added.   She said that AI was "somewhat different" from past technological shifts because, unlike earlier tools that merely changed how people work, AI can now "replace" entire job functions.  She asked who would own any increase in productivity and profits, adding, "Will it flow to workers at all? Will there be some benefits there? Will it be a small number of people? Will it show up in tax revenues?"  Nazareth also said she was concerned that AI was replacing entry-level white-collar jobs, and that this could break the talent pipeline for future managers. In a study, GenAI Skill Transformation Index found that 41% of nearly 2,900 skills had the highest transformational potential, 26% were "highly" exposed, and 46% of skills in a typical job posting were likely to undergo a "hybrid transformation."  Source: Business Insider 10/7/25

California updates job-protect sick leave reasons: On October 1, 2025, AB 406  was signed into law and expanded the reasons employees can take leave under California’s Healthy Workplaces Healthy Families Act (HWHFA).  Last year’s amendments expanded the “safe” time reasons under both laws to include crime victim leave, allowed leave to be used when not just an employee but also a family member was a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking (and crime), and added new reasons connected to victim status for which leave could be used. This year’s amendments amend both laws, effective January 1, 2026, to allow employees to use leave if they or a family member are a victim of certain crimes and are attending judicial proceedings related to that crime, including, but not limited to, any delinquency proceeding, a post-arrest release decision, plea, sentencing, postconviction release decision, or any proceeding where a right of that person is an issue. Additionally, it includes a person who suffers direct or threatened physical, psychological, or financial harm due to the commission or attempted commission of the following crimes or delinquent acts: vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated; felony child abuse likely to produce great bodily harm or a death; assault resulting in the death of a child under eight years old; felony domestic violence; felony physical abuse of an elder or dependent adult; felony stalking; solicitation for murder; a serious felony; hit-and-run causing death or injury; felony driving under the influence causing injury; sexual assault.  Source: Littler 10/3/25