Tracey Diamond, Emily Schifter, and Rick Cuellar, VP of human resources at Retired.com, draw on leadership lessons from the Tom Hanks classic, Saving Private Ryan, to show how military principles can elevate civilian workplaces.
In this episode of Hiring to Firing, hosts Tracey Diamond and Emily Schifter draw on leadership lessons from the Tom Hanks classic, Saving Private Ryan, to show how military principles can elevate civilian workplaces. Joined by Retired.com VP of Human Resources, Rick Cuellar, Army veteran, they connect military best practices to corporate HR, sharing practical guidance on effective leadership, crisis management, and training. Tune in for actionable takeaways, including crisis readiness frameworks, compliance insights on military leave and caregiving, and strategies for meaningful veteran support.
Hiring to Firing Podcast — Teamwork Under Pressure: Workplace Leadership Lessons From Saving Private Ryan
Hosts: Tracey Diamond and Emily Schifter
Guest: Rick Cuellar
Recorded: September 17, 2025
Aired: November 11, 2025
Tracey Diamond:
So in honor of Veterans’ Day today we have a special episode today that talks about military leave using the clips from Saving Private Ryan. Before we push over to our episode, I would like to take a moment to thank our service members for their service and I hope everybody enjoys the episode.
[INTRO]
Tracey Diamond:
Welcome to Hiring to Firing the podcast. I'm Tracey Diamond and I'm here with my partner and co-host Emily Schifter. Together we handle all employment issues from Hiring to Firing.
Emily Schifter:
Today our guest is Rick Cuellar, VP of Human Resources at Wow FinTech, now known as Retired.com, a portfolio of FinTech companies that allow customers to invest in alternative assets, including Bitcoin and their retirement accounts. Rick also coordinates the HR Uncensored newsletter, which I highly recommend. Rick, why don't you tell us a little bit more about retired.com, bitcoin IRA and your background and your role at the company.
Rick Cuellar:
Oh, thank you, Tracey for having me, and it's great to be here. Emily, glad to see you as well, and I think you read it perfectly. Retired.com is a great business that really focuses on the mission of helping Americans retire. That's what we're all about and we do that through all sorts of different means, alternative assets, crypto, and it's a great solution for everyday Americans.
Emily Schifter:
On the cutting edge too.
Rick Cuellar:
It is very much so, and it's actually one of the appeals of working at this business. When I first joined it, it was a great opportunity. Camilo Concha, which is our CEO, is a great man and he first pitched it to me and it just sounded like a great business to join during a startup phase, and it's been amazing, amazing ride ever since.
Tracey Diamond:
Oh, it sounds very interesting. Rick, you've held yourself some interesting and diverse HR roles in your career. I understand that you started your career in HR in the US Army. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?
Rick Cuellar:
I did right after I completed my associate's degree, I was bored with college and I needed a challenge and I was like, you know what? Let's just sign up for the military.
Tracey Diamond:
Wow.
Rick Cuellar:
It was a fun ride. So I joined in 2002 and I served in the army and I actually got assigned to a training battalion, which is basically where when a soldier first signs up with the military, they get on a bus, they get shipped somewhere, and I'm one of the greeters essentially, right? I'm like a Walmart greeter, hey, welcome to the military. But we basically have them go through and we assign their training regimen. We basically get them up to speed with everything that they might need from the basics of life insurance to making sure that they have all their equipment and they get assigned to a drill sergeant and then kind of go from there. So it's been a fun ride.
Tracey Diamond:
It sounds like a really great initiation sort of feet first into onboarding as part of the role of an HR person, right?
Rick Cuellar:
That's exactly what it was. Yeah, onboarding and training.
Tracey Diamond:
Interesting.
Emily Schifter:
Yeah, so you're the perfect guest for this episode today where we thought we would talk a little bit about what we can from the military about effective workplaces and also timely. I happened to see, and we were talking before we started recording today, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released some data that employers have reported over 90,000 instances of workers missing at least a week of work because of military deployments during the first eight months of the year, which is the highest level since 2006 during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict. So a timely topic, but as usual, we are kicking off our discussion with a movie. So today we are taking inspiration from one of our all time favorites, the classic Tom Hanks movie Saving Private Ryan set in 1944 in Normandy, France during World War II. The movie tells the fictional story of a group of soldiers led by Captain John Miller, played by Hanks, on a mission to locate private James Francis Ryan, played by Matt Damon, to bring him home safely after his three brothers have been killed in action. The movie is, of course, famous for many reasons, but it's got some great examples of leadership and teamwork that we thought would be particularly relevant lessons for the workplace. So let's take a listen to our first clip, as the captain contemplates his mission - finding a needle in a stack of needles.
[BEGIN CLIP]
Miller:
Some private in the hundred first lost three brothers, and he is got a ticket home.
Horvath:
How come Neuville?
Miller:
I think he's up there somewhere, part of all those airborne misdrops.
Horvath:
It's not going to be easy to find one particular soldier in the middle of this whole damn war.
Miller:
Like finding a needle in a stack of needles.
Horvath:
But what about the company?
Miller:
We take the pick of the litter and the rest get folded into Baker.
Horvath:
They took away your company?
Miller:
It wasn't my company, it was the Army's. So they told me anyway.
[END CLIP]
Emily Schifter:
This clip sets the stage for the mission that the captain is charged with leading, and I think we'd all agree his character is one of the quintessential examples of strong leadership, even though he didn't have much experience in this realm before the war, he had previously been a teacher. Of course, that's all in the military and that's all Hollywood, but how does that translate to the workplace? Why is effective leadership so important?
Rick Cuellar:
It's absolutely critical. I can't think of any other thing that would be more critical to a business of success outside of leadership. I've worked in HR now for over 20 years. I've worked in consulting for 5. I've dealt with businesses of all shapes and sizes across the country, and honestly, without leadership, your business is just doomed to fail. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, it doesn't matter what you're doing if you're baking cakes, if you're selling widgets, if you're building the next great app for iPhones, it really doesn't matter. Without effective leadership, you are just potentially doomed to fail at worst, but if not, you're definitely doomed to struggle. It can be such a tricky issue to navigate because it's not easy to become a great leader. It takes a lot of years of struggle and experience to get to that place where you really want to be an effective leader, but it's absolutely critical without question.
Emily Schifter:
I think it's interesting too in the movie you kind of have some coming from unexpected places. I think sometimes in companies we see, hey, whoever's the boss is the one who gets to be the leader, but it can be, I think, helpful and interesting sometimes to take a step back on a team and say, who's stepping up and acting as a leader, even if they don't actually have that title?
Rick Cuellar:
Yeah, absolutely. And I've seen that across my career as well. Sometimes you'll pick somebody, you'll move somebody, let's say from an individual contributor role into leadership thinking that that is, let's say natural career progression, but then you end up realizing that maybe they're not cut out for leadership, and it can be either they're not interested in it, they don't like it because there are some inherent challenges with being an effective leader. But I think some of the best leaders I've seen sometimes come from within the ranks, and it's because they're displaying the right qualities of a leader, and sometimes it just takes a while to develop that skillset into becoming a more effective leader, and then you eventually maybe are due for that title change or that promotion.
Tracey Diamond:
What I found though, where companies sometimes really struggle is they have somebody who's really good at doing what they do, but they have absolutely no background in leading others and doing what they do. And so the company rewards the good doer by putting them in a leadership role, but without giving them any training on managing employees. And then that employee sort of set up to fail. And I've seen that time and again where companies are just not investing in the training of leaders who haven't had any leadership experience in the past, and the skills don't always translate from the doing to the leading. I actually think managing employees one of the hardest things that a person can do. It's really takes quite a good deal of skill and experience and judgment.
Rick Cuellar:
I couldn't agree with you more. I think that's absolutely true, and I think sometimes people just think, well, you promote it into leadership, it's common sense. They'll catch on eventually they'll figure it out,
Tracey Diamond:
Right, exactly.
Rick Cuellar:
And that's really not the way it ends up playing out. So I think companies definitely need to invest in training and not just training just to kind of check the box, but something that's actually going to be meaningful towards that specific individual. Too often companies will provide a training. It's kind of a catchall, right? We're going to do a manager one on one training to everybody that's in a management title, and sometimes that doesn't work out because you're trying to play to the lowest common denominator sometimes in the room. And sometimes you might have half the room that needs the more advanced training, more advanced leadership training, and then you have the other half that's so new to the role that yes, maybe they definitely need manager one on one training. Sometimes you definitely need to work to customize training plans towards whomever you have in the room, and that's actually one of the exciting advancements with AI that you can now have such a great tool that can actually help you with customized training plans and really catering training needs to the individual.
But unfortunately, it's still not really used quite as much as I think it should be. And that's probably one of the biggest differences speaking with the military, because the military, they're really big on training. They're really big on repetition, so much so that sometimes it could be a con, but it definitely pays off dividends when you actually need to get something done. So it's no different in the realm of leadership. That's actually one of the reasons why one of the side projects that I have going on right now is actually building a leadership academy specifically for HR professionals because it's something that's definitely needed in the market. I've seen it so many times in and time out with so many different companies because it's definitely needed.
Tracey Diamond:
What do you see are sort of the components, keeping in mind that there isn't really a one size fits all approach, but are there certain basic components that you look for in a leadership academy? Because such a hard skill to teach, isn't it?
Rick Cuellar:
Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think you need to start with the basics because to your point, so many times individual contributors get promoted into a managerial role. Maybe they're working with company A, they get promoted, they come and interview with you, company B, and you're like, oh, they have five years of experience in the supervisor role. Let's bring 'em on over. We hire them and we just kind of expect that they know everything that they need to know about the role in terms of being a leader and a manager, which is not necessarily the same thing, but that's a different point altogether. Ultimately, you end up in a situation where maybe you realize that working with them over the course of a year, like, oh wait, actually they don't feel comfortable having tough conversation with employees. They don't feel comfortable addressing conflict. They don't feel comfortable maybe putting someone on a performance improvement plan.
And you really end up having to almost start with the basics and you realize that regardless of what company they came from, regardless of their pedigree, we're not all on an equal playing ground. And everybody, you have to, and again, to that need of having to customize training because you end up realizing some people need more support than others. Some people are naturals when it comes to the leadership role, and I think you have to work with them the best you can and try and build up that skillset to the best of your ability. And that's really one of those areas where HR in particular can play a really big role in developing up the management team.
Tracey Diamond:
Absolutely. To your point, Rick, sometimes being a leader means making tough decisions. You just alluded to disciplining employees and setting expectations, and sometimes it could be a very unpopular decision that a leader has to make. Having a strict hierarchy like you saw in the army, I would imagine means that those decisions arguably fall entirely on the shoulders of the leader alone. And that's certainly a tough position to be in, and I would imagine a lot of pressure in our next clip. There's an example where the captain explains that whether he agrees or disagrees with the value of the mission isn't something he would discuss downstream. Instead, as he puts it, gripes go up so he can present a unified front to his men. Let's take a listen.
[BEGIN CLIP]
Reiben:
Hey, so Captain, what about you? I mean, you don't gripe at all.
Miller:
I don't gripe to you Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down, always up. You gripe to me. I gripe to my superior officer. So on, so on, so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you. You should know that as a ranger.
Reiben:
I'm sorry sir, but let's say you weren't a captain or maybe I was a major. What would you say then?
Miller:
Well, in that case, I say this is an excellent mission, sir, with an extremely valuable objective, sir, worthy of my best efforts, sir. Moreover, I feel heartfelt sorrow for the mother of Private James Ryan and I'm willing to lay down my life and the lives of my men, especially you, Reiben, to ease her suffering.
Mellish:
He's good.
Caparzo:
I love him.
[END CLIP]
Tracey Diamond:
On the other hand, however, in a famous scene later in the movie, the captain does end up opening up and lets his team see his personal side and a little bit of vulnerability as well as his motivations.
[BEGIN CLIP]
Miller:
Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much, my wife is even going to recognize me whenever it is I get back to her and how I'll ever be able to tell her about days like today, Ryan, I don't know anything about Ryan. I don't care, man means nothing to me. It's just a name. But if going to Ramel and finding him so he can go home, if that earns me the right to get back to my wife, well then that's my mission.
[END CLIP]
Tracey Diamond:
So how can managers or leaders balance being the one in the hot seat, projecting confidence to their team and not really sort of revealing their own concerns or maybe their own questioning of the mission, but also getting support and tough situations showing their human side and being authentic?
Rick Cuellar:
Yeah, that's a tough one. I think it comes from experience. I think it comes from being able to read the room, being able to read how your employees or your team is feeling about any given situation and trying to assess to determine what's really needed in that moment, in those two clips, in the first one where he's talking to his entire team, I think he realizes that he can joke around with the crew a little bit more, right? And he doesn't want the entire team to see him. Soul can be negative about the mission to the point where he brings the entire team down and then ends up almost turning into a mutiny situation where they can all kind of agree, Hey, you know what? Let's ditch this mission. Let's go do something else instead. So he's able to read the room and reframe the conversation towards more the comedic side.
He's actually joking around with them and joking around about the whole major situation. So I think ultimately that's what you want to be able to do in those situations. But on the flip side, in the second scene, he is just with a smaller subset of the entire team, and they just went through some horrific losses in the scenes proceeding that you just had. A couple of their team members die. Obviously it's the military, it's a war movie, so you expect that, but he's again able to read the room and recognize what in this moment, what the team needs is a little bit more honesty. They need a little bit more transparency. They need to see the real me and recognize that maybe while I'm not open about why I want to finish the mission, there is a meaning behind my ambition here. I desperately want to go home.
I too want to go home just like you guys, and in my case, I want to go home and see my wife and put this war behind me. But again, that transparency, that being authentic in front of his team in that moment, that's absolutely what was called for because if not, they're going to see him as being fake, being a robot, being just somebody that says absolutely yes to leadership under any circumstances and isn't going to have their best interest in mind. So I think that was absolutely key in his scenario. And for any other manager that's faced with obviously not the same level of pressure, it's not life or death circumstances for most people. It's the same thing. It's same skillset, right? You got to be able to judge and read the room, how are people feeling? And you'd get there by being able to talk to people and assess how are they feeling about what we're doing here? If we just made an unpopular decision over something significant to them, let's talk about it and let's figure out why they're feeling the way that they are and what can I do to be transparent and support that team given what they need. And that's a critical skill that you have to be able to develop over time. It doesn't come overnight.
Emily Schifter:
I think that's so true. It is that developed judgment that you have. And I also think there's a confidence piece to it as well. Someone who's maybe not as confident in their leadership skills might feel a little more intimidated to show their personal side or to show their vulnerabilities. They might think, hey, this is going to make me look really weak, but a confident leader might say, no, to your point, this is exactly what the team needs to hear is seeing my vulnerable side. And that'll sort of deepen the trust with the team. And I think it also kind of highlights the importance of having support for leaders for them to be able to have, who are they going to go to when they're struggling with a tough decision or what are their resources and support when they're making a tough decision? And sometimes there is no one else in the but kind of stops with them. But definitely something to consider.
Rick Cuellar:
I dealt with this early on in my career. This was a few years after I left the military, but I had taken on my first director level role in HR, and I was in charge of a team of 13 different HR professionals, and it was the biggest team I had ever managed at that point in my career here as at director level. And I had a lot of that kind of, let's say, military mindset in terms of the leadership dynamic with my team. And I was very much of the mindset that things needed to be top down and not a lot of checking in on my team and seeing how they're doing. And I quickly realized that that was not the best approach. And sometimes you have to be able to be transparent, and let's say you're talking to the CEO about a specific need that the employees have.
Maybe it's a comp adjustment or something, and maybe the decision doesn't go your way as an HR professional. Maybe you think everybody should get a 5% increase and CEO says, no, we're doing 1%. And maybe you as an HR professional disagree with that vehemently. You can have all the data that you want to show why this is the wrong move and it's going to impact our retention and our turnover and all sorts of different reasons. But ultimately, you have to be able to, when you go back to your team and you present, Hey, look, this decision didn't go our way. You have to be able to have a little bit of transparency and be able to openly talk about, Hey, you know what? This is disappointing and I really do think it should be this, and if I were the CEO, maybe I wouldn't have decided it this way, but they have their reasons, and it could be because of X, Y, and Z, maybe a market downturn, or we're expecting we're seeing a revenue decline or whatever it may be.
And just being a little bit more transparent so that the other HR professionals on your team are able to see that it's not just a griping session. There are legitimate business reasons why we're making this decision in this way and hopefully get the more exposure to some of the other aspects of the business that a lot of HR professionals sometimes lack, right? They're not thinking about revenue, they're not thinking about the market. They're only thinking about what's best for the employees here and now. So it's definitely something that I had to learn along the way, and I think it comes from experience.
Tracey Diamond:
The military is often known for having clear path to promotion and advancement, very hierarchical. Is that something that can translate into the private sector?
Rick Cuellar:
I think can employees want to see that translated a little bit, right? You want to know that if you're coming in as a desk level or employee or an associate or whatever your rank might be, that you want to have a clear path. So I know if I do X, Y, and Z, I can get promoted to associate two or whatever the titles are and be able to work my way up into some kind of specialist role or some kind of managerial or leadership role. I think they want that, and I've seen it time and time again in surveys that people want to have some kind of career path outlined for themselves. And if the company's able to be transparent about those expectations, it's even better because then you know that there is clear cut criteria that you have to meet if you want to see that promotion or that next pay raise or whatever it is.
And even the military, it's not perfect either. People sometimes have this connotation that it's very clear cut. You do X, Y, and Z, and you get promoted, and then there isn't. It's not always that way. There's a lot of subjectivity in these decisions and sometimes whether it's the military or whether it's the private sector, we get it wrong. We're not always making the right moves in terms of who we promote. There can be a lot of factors that go into that. I think everybody's just trying to do the best that they can, but to whatever extent a company can outline a career path for somebody, I think it's ideal.
Emily Schifter:
And to your point, not being too mechanistic about it of saying somebody is a really great individual contributor and just sort of, they've been here enough years, let's go ahead and bump them up to the next level. But I think you're right, having those criteria so that we're promoting people who are going to be successful in the role is important as well.
Tracey Diamond:
Otherwise, you wind up with a union environment where it's just seniority and not based on skills or experience at all, which might not be in the company's best interest.
Emily Schifter:
I think that's right. And I also think we've talked before on other episodes about succession planning. I think that's maybe the backside of it too, is on the companies and thinking about criteria for promotion, but also thinking about what are the roles that we have that we need to fill and making sure that people who we'd like to fill those roles have the skills, skillsets needed so that they can do well in the role. Changing gears a little bit and Saving Private Ryan, the movies combat scenes are, I think some of its past known, and while they may not seem to relate to most workplaces anyway on first blush, they actually also give, I think some good examples of crisis management in the military. Certainly that's something that you see every day or at least more frequently than you might in the private sector. We see it in a different way, of course, in the private sector. But are there any tips from how the military approaches these sorts of situations or how to prepare for these sorts of situations that could be applicable to the private sector?
Rick Cuellar:
Absolutely. I think it all comes down to training, repetition. The military is really big on that, right? If you're learning to, I don't know, shoot, or if you're learning how to jump out of an airplane or whatever the task may be, they beat that drum over and over and over and over again until it becomes either muscle memory or it's just ingrained so much into you that you can do it without question, without second guessing yourself. And ultimately, you do that because you want to be able to perform these tasks under pressure, right? Because if you are in a life and death scenario or you are in this emergency scenario, you have to be able to do it with when you're under pressure or you're getting shot at or whatever the case may be. That's why you beat it over and over again. And I think when it comes to, let's say the private sector, that's something that doesn't happen nearly enough in my opinion, especially when you're looking at, let's say safety in the workplace, especially when you're talking about scenarios where you could potentially be faced with workplace violence or an active shooter scenario.
All too often, I would see this a lot in my consulting years ago, we would go to a client and we would evaluate the air HR function from A to Z, right? See what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong. And one of those categories was safety. And let's say you're an office, safety may not be much more than maybe the occasional paper cut, right? There may not be a lot there, but there's always that element of workplace violence. And 9 times out of 10, you look at a business and they don't have any training for their management team in terms of how do you deal with workplace violence? It's a reality anywhere in the world, but especially here in the us you see it time and time again through different news stories and all too often I would say that most businesses are just not prepared for it.
There's a lack of training in that area is with a lot of areas, but specifically in the area of safety, there's a lack of training. And that's one of those circumstances where you would probably benefit the most from having some kind of additional training. And I get it, it can be expensive, it can be costly to kind of go through that, but I think it's definitely worthwhile. It's one of the areas where, again, the military just does it really well, and it's because they have the funds obviously and the budget to be able to allocate so much training to their troops. It's definitely a lesson for the private sector, I would say.
Tracey Diamond:
It's such a good point because we have fire drills periodically because the buildings require fire drills, but you really don't see a whole lot of other types of workplace violence prevention training and workplace safety training in an office environment. Manufacturing facilities are a little bit of a different story, and I do agree with you. That's an important lesson that we could be taking away from the military. And I also would say that we can analogize it to just general crisis management training. It's hard to prepare ahead of time for a crisis. Every crisis is different. You don't know what type of crisis your company might experience in the future, but just having some general thoughts and strategies in place ahead of time of who you're going to call in terms of potentially a third party PR vendor or consultant, what's going to be needed if it's union organizing? Are you going to have your vendors in place to come in and do some union avoidance training? If it's a PR crisis that's out in the media, something's on social media who you're going to call to help you, or what resources are you going to utilize internally to help you manage that crisis? Thinking through those issues ahead of time, even if it's in sort of broad based generalized terms, really helps for preparation. Really good lesson there, Rick. I appreciate you bringing that up.
Rick Cuellar:
If I could just give one guidance to a lot of employers is that sometimes they're actually paying for some of these trainings and these services and they don't even realize it. One of the things that we would do in some of these HR assessments is we would look at the vendor contracts, and sometimes you end up seeing that maybe through their worker's comp coverage, they're actually paying for or have access to training resources from that vendor, from that worker's comp coverage. And the company isn't even aware of it and they don't, or nobody has actually realized maybe it's the CFO signed the contract, right? Because they're dealing with all the fancy workers' comp coverage renewals. But then that message doesn't get conveyed down to the HR team that is responsible for delivering the training and then you realize, well, actually in the contract that says you're eligible from this worker's comp team to actually send somebody out to your facility, evaluate doing a quarterly HR assessment, and they also have training resources, whether it's in-person, virtual or whatever. So sometimes companies are paying for these resources and just not taking advantage of it. So I definitely recommend people take a look at those contracts, and even if it's not in there, put a little bit of pressure on some of those vendors to offer these trainings, hopefully free of charge or at lower costs to kind of provide that resource to your team.
Tracey Diamond:
Great point. And look, if you're outsourcing your payroll, if you're a PEO, sometimes those types of vendors also provide different types of training, and I would suspect that a lot of companies aren't taking advantage of what they're paying for already. I want to shift gears for a bit though. So on a practical note, we'd be remiss not to ask about what happens when the military intersects with the private sector. So we've been talking a lot about lessons we could take on leadership from the military and its structure, but what we haven't talked about yet is our employees that are actually leaving us to go serve in the armed forces. So as Emily mentioned in the beginning, that's at the highest rate than it's been in many years. So it's a real, where as before, employers might not have been seeing too many employees going off to serve. Now we're seeing more and more is becoming more typical. What obligations do employers have to employees who serve in the armed forces? And beyond that, what can companies do to support those who are serving or are veterans? A big question.
Rick Cuellar:
Yeah. I think for most HR teams, they focus on the laws, right? They'll look at the federal laws, they'll look at any state laws that might apply to that specific service member's leave, and that's great. That's a great starting point. What I would suggest is taking a look at some other factors that you can explore to help support that individual employee and service member. Whether it's something as simple as providing recognition for anybody who served on, let's say, Veteran's Day, right? Your company may recognize that or may not recognize that as a, let's say, company recognize holiday, but some companies will go out of their way to even include pictures of all the service members right in their company newsletter or something like that. Or recognize the family members as well of anybody who's an existing service member to try and provide more of a holistic approach to support that specific individual.
I think I've seen some companies that will really go out of their way to kind of help in terms of supporting the family, whether, let's say you're the spouse of a service member, then maybe they provide you with additional resources, or they at the very least go in more detail and explain what benefits are available to you. So you're kind of reminded to take part in those benefit packages, or they'll go out of their way to create, let's say, donation drives or building care packages to send overseas. And those types of things, I think show, let's say an elevated level of support for those who are serving that I think is above and beyond what you can expect from an average business. So I think if you're able to do that, you're able to have that recognition, make sure you're talking about benefits, and you're maybe donating your time through sending out for care packages or donation drives and those types of things. I think that goes a long way towards showing your support for those service members. In addition to kind of meeting your basic obligations under federal and state laws.
Tracey Diamond:
Emily, from a legal compliance perspective, there's a lot there, but what do you see in terms of legal obligations that an employer should keep in mind if their employees are going off to serve?
Emily Schifter:
USERRA is the big federal law specific to military leave. There's also a component of FMLA family and medical leave that relates to caring for a service member, which I think sometimes gets forgotten. Everyone thinks of new parent bonding leave, but the FMLA can come to bear too. And then of course, many states, as you mentioned, Rick have their own laws covering leave for military service, and not even always just militaries is the way we traditionally think Army, Navy or something like that, but also civil air patrols, emergency responder leave, and things like that. So there's certainly kind of a patchwork of obligations that employers need to be aware of, especially if they're in multiple states, which so many of our clients these days are.
Tracey Diamond:
That is very true. Rick, thanks so much for joining us today. This was a really interesting topic and something I don't think we've touched on in any of our previous podcast episodes, both from a concept of lessons we can learn from the military and obligations of employers when our employees were going off for military leave. Thank you to our listeners for listening into this episode. Please check out our blog HiringtoFiring.Law and shoot us an email. Let us know what you think. Give us some ideas for future episodes. Thanks so much for listening.
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