Fractional HR & Leave Compliance

Every leave request has a right answer. We find it before it becomes a problem.

Clearlane HR designs and runs leave-of-absence programs for growing employers — FMLA, ADA, and state paid leave, built into policy your managers can actually follow, without adding headcount.

Founder credentials
CertificationSHRM-CP · PMP
LOA program scale8,500+ employees, 50 states
BackgroundFormer classroom teacher
Prior LOA program built for 8,500+ employees All 50 states — playbook adopted org-wide Serving employers sized 250–2,500 Healthcare · Insurance · Manufacturing · Nonprofit
What we do

HR expertise, on the lanes you're missing

Most mid-size companies don't need a full HR department — they need the two or three things a full department would already have covered. Clearlane HR fills those specific lanes.

FMLA · ADA

Leave-of-Absence Program Design

End-to-end LOA program build: eligibility rules, notice timelines, intermittent-leave tracking, and return-to-work workflows, documented so any HR generalist can run them without escalating every case.

50-State Playbook

Multi-State Compliance

State paid-leave laws don't wait for your handbook refresh. We monitor and translate multi-jurisdiction leave requirements into a single policy framework that scales as you open new states.

On-Demand

Fractional HR Partnership

Ongoing HR support priced like a subscription, not a headcount line — policy review, employee relations guidance, and compliance audits on a cadence that fits your company's size.

Manager-Ready

Manager Training & Scripts

Word-for-word conversation scripts and a do-not-say reference for the moments managers get nervous — leave requests, accommodation conversations, return-to-work check-ins.

"I spent years translating federal leave law into the exact sentence a floor manager needed to hear. That's still the job — the audience just changed."
— Kristin Kokalis, Founder, SHRM-CP · PMP
01

Built by a former teacher. Policy language gets rewritten until a non-HR manager can follow it on the first read — no compliance jargon left for someone else to translate later.

02

Tested at scale, not theory. Every framework was run against a real 8,500-employee, 50-state leave program before it became a template.

03

Project-managed delivery. PMP-certified execution means engagements ship on a defined timeline, not an open-ended retainer.

Digital products

Don't need a consultant yet? Start here.

Self-serve tools for companies that need a compliant leave policy now and a full engagement later — or never.

Digital bundle

LOA Administration Toolkit

The templates HR teams reach for every week: leave request forms, designation letters, return-to-work checklists, and an intermittent-leave tracker, ready to brand and deploy.

Licensed tool

Command Center Dashboard

A lightweight internal dashboard for tracking open leave cases, upcoming return dates, and compliance deadlines across every state you operate in — no new HRIS required.

Illinois, 2026

What's changing under Illinois employers this year

A running list of the Illinois leave and workplace law changes we're tracking for clients. If your policy hasn't been updated for these, it's out of date.

Effective June 1, 2026

NICU Leave

New parental leave protections for employees whose newborn requires neonatal intensive care, running alongside existing FMLA and Illinois parental leave entitlements.

In effect

Nursing Mothers in the Workplace Act (Paid Break Time)

Illinois requires paid, reasonable break time for lactation, with narrower undue-hardship exceptions than the federal PUMP Act — a common gap in employer handbooks.

In effect

Illinois AI Hiring & Employment Rules

New disclosure and non-discrimination requirements for employers using AI in hiring, promotion, and — relevant to leave administration — automated accommodation or return-to-work decisions.

Ongoing

Illinois Paid Leave for All Workers Act

Still the most misapplied law we see: 40 hours of paid leave for any reason, accrual rules, and interaction with existing PTO policies that were never rewritten to comply.

KK

Kristin Kokalis

Founder & Principal Consultant
SHRM-CP, Society for Human Resource Management PMP, Project Management Institute BA Psychology, University of Iowa Former classroom teacher 8+ years in leave & benefits administration

Compliance work is a translation problem before it's a legal one.

Before HR, Kristin spent years in the classroom — which turns out to be the best possible training for compliance work. The hardest part of leave administration was never the law itself. It was getting a busy floor manager to apply it correctly under pressure, without a lawyer in the room.

That's the lens Clearlane HR builds from: leave-of-absence programs, policy documents, and manager scripts that hold up under real conditions, not just in a handbook. Every framework was developed and tested managing FMLA, ADA, and multi-state leave for an organization of more than 8,500 employees across all 50 states, then rebuilt for companies without that infrastructure already in place.

Clearlane HR works with employers directly, or alongside existing HR teams as a fractional partner, on the specific leave and compliance lanes that keep getting deprioritized until they can't be.

Let's find your compliance gaps before your auditor does.

A free 30-minute consult covers where your current leave policy is exposed, and whether a fractional engagement or a self-serve tool is the right next step.