How to comply with labor poster laws when you have remote employees
It’s the million-dollar logistical question of 2021: How do you hang federal labor law posters when your employees are working remotely?
The answer depends on whether you have physical office space, how you usually communicate with employees and the requirements for each notice.
Following the pandemic, many business owners are changing the ways their employees work. Some may allow employees to work remotely on occasion, while others may choose to become fully remote teams, which could include employees in different states. These changes to where work gets done can affect your federal labor law poster compliance.
Keep hanging labor law posters in physical workplaces
Unless you have a fully remote workforce with no physical meeting or office space, sending electronic labor law notices does not replace hanging posters in most cases. The U.S. Department of Labor released guidance in December 2020, saying that most electronic dissemination simply supplements the physical labor law posters or other hard copies of notices.
If your team is fully remote, virtually posting labor law notices may be sufficient, as long as they’re readily available and shared in a way that’s normal for your business communications.
Don’t start a new communication method to share posters
The Labor Department’s guidance says that if you do send virtual notices, employees should receive them in a way that’s normal for your regular business operations.
For example, if you’re going to share labor posters and notices with employees online, avoid setting up a new page on your intranet or website that employees can’t readily find or access. If your employees rarely use a file-sharing program or shared network drive, don’t post electronic notices there. If you don’t normally use a chat system or email to communicate with your employees, don’t send labor posters via those channels.
However, if an easy-to-navigate intranet site, a shared network drive or email are part of your regular communication systems that employees use regularly, Wage and Hour Division field staff would consider those acceptable avenues for posting notices. Remember the first requirement though: Unless your workforce is fully remote, sending electronic notices is supplemental to hard copies in most cases, not a replacement.
If you do regularly communicate with your employees via email, you can find online services that disseminate notices and posters based on each employee’s location. These services can help you stay on top of compliance requirements, especially if your dispersed workforce resides in several different states and counties. We haven’t tried them yet, but a few options for automated digital poster services include:
Make your virtual notice resemble the physical requirement
Different federal labor law posters have different requirements for sharing with employees. Some need to be delivered just once, and others must be constantly visible in a well-trafficked area.
Unfortunately, these requirements weren’t written with virtual teams and workspaces in mind. If you’re digitally posting labor notices, try to align your electronic posting solution as closely as possible with the requirements for the physical workspace. For example:
Delivery of individual notices. Employees in a physical workspace may receive a hard copy in person or via snail mail. If you normally email your employees, sending an individual notice via email would be acceptable.
Post and keep posted. Tacking up labor law posters in a breakroom and leaving them there until they expire meets the continuous posting requirement. Consider the electronic method you’re thinking about using. If your email client auto-deletes messages after a certain number of days or older chats disappear from conversation history, those labor notices are eventually lost to your employees.
In conspicuous places. Just like hanging labor law posters in the back of a closet won’t keep you compliant, hiding labor notices in the dusty back corner of your website won’t cut it online. As we discussed, virtual notices should be posted through normal means of communication. Make sure the notices are easy to see, readily accessible and not password protected.
Check your state and local requirements to stay compliant
These remote employee guidelines come from the U.S. Department of Labor, so they only apply to federal labor notices, like the posters about FLSA, OSHA, FMLA and EEO. (To track down which federal labor notices you need to display, try the Labor Department’s FirstStep Poster Advisor.)
State and local jurisdictions can have their own sets of labor law posters, some of which have differing laws that supersede the federal labor law guidance. To stay fully compliant, jump on your state’s labor department website, or give them a call to ask about remote workforce and virtual posting regulations.