Compliance with employment law posting requirements is essential because you must ensure your employees know their employment rights. To comply, you must display federal, state, and local labor posters in common work areas so your employees can easily see them.

At a bare minimum, you need to display the following postings:

• Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
• Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
• Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA)
• Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)
• Services Contract Act (SCA)
• Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)
• Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA)
• Any state- or local-specific posters that apply to the company. i.e., minimum wage, fair employment, etc.

Meeting these employment law requirements is straightforward, mainly when all your employees are on-site. But what if your workforce is partly or wholly remote? Then, how do you make sure you comply with posting requirements?

To answer these questions, we put together this short guide on what the US Department of Labor (DOL) says about remote posting requirements. And what it means for you if you have a hybrid or remote workforce.

Employment Law posting requirements for remote working environments

In response to the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the move towards remote working, the DOL produced a set of employment law requirements for digital postings:

Electronic versions of federal and state labor law posters are only considered acceptable substitutes for physical versions if:

• All your employees exclusively work remotely.
• You customarily send information to all your employees through electronic means.
• Your employees can easily access the electronic posting at all times.

The DOL encourages employers to provide both paper and digital versions of labor law posters if you have a mixture of both on-site and remote workers. This ensures all employees can easily access them. It’s also essential that employees can effortlessly identify which postings apply to them.

How employers can comply

What do these guidelines and requirements look like in practice? Here are a few tips to ensure you comply:

1) Research

Your HR department or outsource partner need to know which posters are mandated. This will differ by industry, state, or headcount, among other things. Remember to think about the physical locations of all remote staff as well as the employer’s main place(s) of operation to help identify which federal, state, and local posters are required.

2) Organize your display

It gets complicated when you have remote employees scattered throughout different states. Posting requirements vary from state to state. And remember, you’re obligated to make it easy for your employees to discern which postings apply to them. So, if posting on an intranet, organize them by location or only give access to applicable posters based on employee login credentials.

3) Remain consistent

Not only does every employee need access to the posters, but you want to guarantee the digital versions are the same as any hard copies you post. They should all be in an easy-to-read format, too.

4) Be clear where you post them

Give employees step-by-step instructions on accessing the postings in your employee handbook. Make them easy to find in your intranet or break areas. If you have a hybrid workplace, provide both hard and electronic copies to all employees. Email your employees any new poster requirements or updates to current ones. With each new update, remind them of how and where to find the posters physically and electronically.

With the increasing number of remote and hybrid work situations, compliance with posting requirements can be tricky. But, by following the DOL’s guidance and the tips in this article, you will help employees quickly access information on the labor laws that apply to them.

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