EEOC – Workforce

June 3, 2024June 3, 2024

The PWFA: What Employers Must Know

Summary:

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) mandates employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant and qualified employees. At the very least, reasonable accommodations could mean time off, including scheduling changes and temporary reassignments.
The EEOC’s final regulation for the law will go into effect on June 18, 2024.
An efficient workforce management solution can help with compliance and managing accommodations.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued the final regulation to carry out the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PFWA) that will go into effect on June 18, 2024. Designed to protect the rights of pregnant employees, the PWFA mandates that businesses provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers, similar to those provided under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Understanding and implementing the PWFA not only helps you stay compliant with federal law but also promotes a supportive and inclusive work environment.

Here’s a quick rundown of the PWFA and how you can best comply.

What is the PWFA?

The PFWA law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees. It took effect in June 2023, but the EEOC recently issued the final regulation to implement it.

It protects employees who have known limitations. Under the law, these refer to physical and mental conditions related to, affected by, or arising from pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.

The law applies to public and private sector employers with more than 15 employees.

What does reasonable accommodation exactly mean?

Basically, these are adjustments or changes in the work environment that would help qualified employees. The most obvious accommodation would be providing time off for treatments, doctor’s appointments, and childbirth, but it could be other things. Some examples include:

Flexible break times for drinking water or using the restroom
Changes in work schedule
Temporary reassignment
Providing equipment or modifying a workstation
Assigning light duty
Offloading some essential functions of the job

Employers are required to provide such accommodations as long as it would not cause any undue hardship to the organization. Under the law, undue hardship means “a significant difficulty or expense.”

The law also has provisions that provide safeguards that ensure qualified employees will get the adjustments that are right for their condition. For instance, employers can’t force employees to take reasonable accommodations aside from what both parties previously agreed on.

While providing time off for qualified reasons is acceptable, employers can’t force employees to take leave when they can implement adjustments to keep them working their shifts. For instance, if a pregnant employee works a cash register and can’t stand for long hours, it would be non-compliance for employers if they forced the employee to take time off when they could provide a stool to keep the employee comfortable while working.

Under the PWFA, employers are also not allowed to deny an opportunity and punish employees for requesting reasonable accommodations. Coercing employees who are exercising their rights and people who help them do so is also prohibited under the law.

Who are qualified employees under PWFA?

Qualified employees under the PWFA are those employees who can perform their duties and fundamental tasks with or without reasonable accommodation. Most employees would meet this requirement because they would most likely be able to perform their essential functions when they’re provided adjustments at work.

But what if core work functions or duties need to be adjusted, such as when an employee can’t perform a task? Employees can still be qualified, provided that their inability is temporary and that they can return to their essential functions in the near future. For instance, if the job requires an employee to operate heavy equipment, employers may modify their task to only involve light work.

Tips for complying with the PWFA

Complying with the PWFA is not just a legal obligation. It’s also about promoting a more inclusive work environment and improving retention. Here are some practical tips for implementing it in your organization.

Establish a process for PWFA

It’s all about communication and transparency. Employees must be aware of the law and how they can qualify and practice their rights under it. A process with a clear set of guidelines is essential.

Obviously, it all starts with employees letting management know of their condition. Employees should know who to inform to get the ball rolling. Aside from their immediate supervisors, who else do they need to notify?

The guidelines should also include the type of information qualified employees need to provide. However, it’s important to note that it’s not mandatory under the law to present medical records to request for reasonable accommodation, especially when the condition is very apparent. For instance, there is a need for schedule modifications because of morning sickness or the need for bigger uniforms down the line.

However, employers may request medical documentation to confirm that the level of reasonable accommodation requested is appropriate. This pertains to work changes that warrant a suspension of one or more essential functions, such as if the employee must avoid exposure to certain chemicals or has a temporary inability to operate heavy equipment. In addition, employers should keep medical records confidential.

Train your managers

Much of the work around complying with PWFA is between the managers and frontline staff. Ensure your managers and supervisors are equipped to implement the law and identify qualified employees. Access to materials about the law and their role in implementing it can help them navigate it better. It also helps to familiarize them with other related laws, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA).

Stay on top of compliance with a workforce management platform

Navigating the PWFA will be less challenging when you have a system that helps you stay on top of it.

On paper, it sounds simple to provide accommodations to pregnant and qualified employees under the law. However, it’s a more complex situation on the ground. Workforce.com can help run your team efficiently in compliance with PWFA, or any labor law for that matter. Here’s how:

Accurate scheduling – When an employee is qualified under PWFA and needs scheduling changes, you can set qualifications so that you will be notified if you accidentally schedule them for shifts or stations that are inappropriate for their current condition.
Accessible handbook and training guides – Workforce.com’s HRIS makes it easy for your frontline teams to access the employee handbook and other materials they need, such as your policy on PWFA. This can come in handy should your employees need to clarify any points in your policies or rules.
Easy way to stay on top of last-minute shift changes – In case qualified employees face an emergency that compels them to miss a shift, managers can quickly offer the vacant shift to available staff through Workforce.com’s shift bidding functionality.
A feedback platform for improving operations – Workforce.com has a shift feedback that prompts employees to rate their shifts. Use this to see if reasonable accommodations are still appropriate and to gauge how the rest of the team feels about the current setup.

The PWFA is a significant step to ensuring that pregnant workers can get the support they need in the workplace. Compliance can be challenging, but the right platform can simplify the process for you. With Workforce.com, you can reduce administrative burden, track accommodations, manage documentation, and ensure that all employees are treated fairly. Discover how Workforce.com can help you stay on top of every stage of the employee life cycle, from hiring to payroll. Book a call today.

June 2, 2021

Hospital employees are about to lose a vaccination lawsuit against their employer in spectacular fashion

Some 117 employees have sued their employer, Houston Methodist Hospital, over its requirement that all employees receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

According to ABC News, the hospital gave its employees a June 7 deadline to get vaccinated or face suspension and termination. The employees allege that their employer is “illegally requiring its employees to be injected with an experimental vaccine as a condition of employment.” The lawsuit adds that the hospital’s vaccine requirement violates the “Nuremberg Code and the public policy of the state of Texas.”

In a statement, hospital CEO Dr. Marc Boom said, “It is unfortunate that the few remaining employees who refuse to get vaccinated and put our patients first are responding in this way. It is legal for health care institutions to mandate vaccines, as we have done with the flu vaccine since 2009. The COVID-19 vaccines have proven through rigorous trials to be very safe and very effective and are not experimental.”

Dr. Boom is 100 percent correct; the hospital’s policy is legal. Here’s why, and why this lawsuit will fail spectacularly.

1. The EEOC expressly says that mandatory vaccine policies are 100 percent legal (as long as an employer makes allowances to accommodate employees whose underlying disabilities, sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, or observances, or pregnancy prevents them from getting vaccinated). Because I’ve seen zero references that any of the 117 plaintiffs are claiming an ADA or Title VII violation, I conclude that the hospital has met its legal obligations in this regard. (Note, however, that Texas is considering pending legislation that would make “COVID-19 vaccination status” a protected class under its employment discrimination law.)

2. Public policy actually favors as many individuals getting vaccinated as possible. Just ask the Biden White House, the CDC, the EEOC, OSHA, just about any other government agency, and even the State of Texas (although its governor did sign an Executive Order prohibiting government entities from compelling that anyone receives a COVID-19 vaccine administered under an emergency use authorization). Note also that there are efforts underway in states across the country (e.g., Ohio) to prohibit a business from mandating vaccines or permitting individuals to decline a required vaccine based on medical contraindications, natural immunity, or reasons of conscience.

3. The Nuremberg Code is not a thing, at least not in this context. In fact, there’s been a lot of chatting lately about the Nuremberg Code as a justification to refuse vaccine mandates. It’s wrong and it’s offensive. It’s a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation created as a result of the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II. It was a reaction to the medical atrocities committed by Dr. Josef Mengele and other Nazis during the war, with the intent of protecting people from suffering similar atrocities. To compare Nazi war crimes to a life-saving vaccine that has been tested and vetted is the height of disgusting selfishness.

Bottom line: If you want to mandate that your employees get vaccinated as a condition of employment, you are legally in the clear to do so, subject to reasonable accommodation exceptions under the ADA for disabled employees, and under Title VII for employees’ sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, or observances, and for pregnant employees. Any other gripes, complaints, or objections by employees are just smokescreens that you can legally ignore, at least for now.

June 1, 2021

EEOC says that employers legally can offer incentives to employees to get vaccinated in almost all instances

Employers have been anxiously waiting for the EEOC to publish its guidance for employers on incentives offered to employees in exchange for getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Late last week, the EEOC finally released that guidance. The issue is whether the incentive renders the vaccine coerced and therefore non-voluntary, which would be unlawful under the ADA and GINA.

What did the EEOC say:

An employer may offer an incentive to employees to voluntarily provide documentation or other confirmation that they received a vaccination on their own.

An employer may offer an incentive to employees for voluntarily receiving a vaccination administered by the employer or its agent as long as the incentive is not so substantial as to be coercive, and as long as the employer does not acquire genetic information while administering the vaccines. The EEOC does not offer any guidance as to what “so substantial as to be coercive” means, but it’s safe to assume that the incentives employers are offering (a day or two of added PTO, payments or gift cards up to a couple hundred dollars) will not meet this standards and are safe. And when states are offering the vaccinated the chance to win a million dollars…

An employer may not offer any incentives to an employee in exchange for a family member’s receipt of a vaccination from the employer or its agent, as such incentive would necessarily require the disclosure of the family medical history of the employee, which would violate GINA.

An employer may offer vaccinations to an employee’s family members if those vaccines are voluntary, employees are not penalized if their family members are not vaccinated, and all medical information obtained from family members during the pre-vaccine screening process is only used for the purpose of providing the vaccination, is kept confidential, and is not provided to any managers, supervisors, or others who make employment decisions for the employees.

Employers may (and I’ll add, should) provide employees and their family members with information to educate them about COVID-19 vaccines and raise awareness about the benefits of vaccination.

This guidance is not earth-shattering or surprising. With more than 50 percent of the country having received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, it provides confirmation and legal comfort to those employers that have already offered such incentives. It also follows an important governmental trend we’ve recently seen across agencies—the adoption of policies intended to incentivize people to get vaccinated. Whether its PTO for vaccines, the CDC’s new mask rules, or OSHA reversing course and eliminating its prior guidance that required the reporting of adverse reactions to employer-mandated vaccines, the federal government is actively breaking down barriers that discourage or disincentivize employees from getting vaccinated.

With only 40.7 percent of the country fully vaccinated, we are a long way from the number needed to reach the all-important herd immunity, if we ever get there. While it feels like life is starting to return to normal, the COVID-19 pandemic is not over yet. Do your part and get your shot. And, if you’re an employer looking to get as many of your employees vaccinated as possible, you can rest easier knowing that the EEOC will not penalize you for offering vaccine incentives to your employees.

May 10, 2021October 13, 2021

EEOC commissioner wants industry-specific COVID-19 guidelines

Last week, the EEOC held a public meeting on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on civil rights in the workplace. Following up on the remarks at that meeting, EEOC Commissioner Keith Sonderling, speaking at a virtual summit held by the Institute for Workplace Equality, said that employers need guidance on whether their COVID-related decisions are legal, and that the EEOC should issue industry-specific guidance to clear up these ambiguities.

Law 360 quotes Commissioner Sonderling:

I stress that the commission must issue new, common-sense guidance on return-to-work and other timely issues. Moving forward, the EEOC must begin to issue industry-specific guidance to address the array of issues that are becoming prevalent as the pandemic enters its final stage. … It’s my belief that businesses must know they will not be penalized by the federal government or through litigation for taking bold steps to help their workers thrive amid COVID-19 and ultimately return to the workplace.

High on my list of topics that the EEOC must quickly address is the legality of vaccine incentives. Another issue that I’d love to see the agency address is whether certain industries (e.g., health care, education) can be more strict with vaccine requirements than others, even for employees who might otherwise require a legal exception.

With vaccine hesitancy a legitimate barrier to reaching herd immunity, we need rules that will permit employers to get as many individuals vaccinated as possible. We need to be breaking down barriers, not erecting them.

March 31, 2021

COVID-19 vaccination cards will be required to do lots of things — possibly even working

According to the Wall Street Journal, COVID-19 vaccination cards are our only proof of vaccination status and will soon be as essential as a drivers’ license or passport. With no national or statewide centralized databases of vaccination records, the piece of paper you receive with your vaccine dose is your only proof of vaccination.

The article suggests that we’ll need this record to do lots of things moving forward, such as travel. What about returning to in-person work? Can employers ask for or require that employees provide proof of vaccination?

According to the EEOC, the answer is yes as to the ask.

Is asking or requiring an employee to show proof of receipt of a COVID-19 vaccination a disability-related inquiry?

No. There are many reasons that may explain why an employee has not been vaccinated, which may or may not be disability-related. Simply requesting proof of receipt of a COVID-19 vaccination is not likely to elicit information about a disability and, therefore, is not a disability-related inquiry. However, subsequent employer questions, such as asking why an individual did not receive a vaccination, may elicit information about a disability and would be subject to the pertinent ADA standard that they be “job-related and consistent with business necessity.” If an employer requires employees to provide proof that they have received a COVID-19 vaccination from a pharmacy or their own health care provider, the employer may want to warn the employee not to provide any medical information as part of the proof in order to avoid implicating the ADA.

The question then becomes what does an employer do if an employee cannot provide proof of vaccination? If the vaccine is mandatory and a condition of employment, it can deny access to the workplace or even terminate, provided that it is considering exceptions for employees’ disabilities and sincerely held religious beliefs, practices and observances. If the vaccine is not mandatory, why ask for the vaccine record in the first place?

We are entering a very interesting era of privacy, including employee privacy. If you are not mandating the vaccine, while you are within your legal right to ask about vaccination status, why would you? Do you really want to catalogue your employees’ vaccination status and for what purpose?

March 17, 2021

CDC allows large employers to establish vaccination sites

The CDC released guidance permitting large employers to establish temporary sites to vaccinate employees.

The CDC on March 16 said that employers should consider opting for an on-site vaccination program if they have a large number of employees with predictable schedules and enough space to set up a pop-up clinic while still allowing for COVID-appropriate social distancing.

Employers should consider pushing employees to off-site vaccination clinics if they have a smaller number of employees, employees with flexible or non-predictable schedules, mobile employees who don’t have one worksite, or employees who’d prefer not to have their employer administer their vaccine.

Employers who choose to set up a vaccination site still must follow the EEOC’s guidelines on managing vaccines under the ADA, Title VII, and GINA (which I summarized here).

Bravo to the CDC for implementing policies to encourage as many employees to get shots in their arms as quickly as possible. It’s the only way we are going to stay ahead of the more contagious (and perhaps more deadly) variants and beat this pandemic. To this end, I highly recommend that you check out the CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Toolkit for Essential Workers, in addition to these 5 tips on building vaccine confidence in your workplace:

Encourage your leaders to be vaccine champions. These leaders should reflect the diversity of the workforce. Invite them to share with staff their personal reasons for getting vaccinated and remind staff why it’s important to be vaccinated.

Communicate transparently to all workers about vaccination. See Key Things to Know, Frequently Asked Questions, and Myths and Facts for up-to-date information.

Create a communication plan. Share key messages with staff through breakroom posters, emails, and other channels. Emphasize the benefits of protecting themselves, their families, co-workers, and community. This fact sheet is available in numerous languages.

Provide regular updates on topics like the benefits, safety, side effects, and effectiveness of vaccination; clearly communicate what is not known.

Make visible the decision to get vaccinated and celebrate it! Provide stickers for workers to wear after vaccination and encourage them to post selfies on social media.

Now please do your family, friends, coworkers, me, and society in general a huge favor and get vaccinated as soon as your state allows you to do so. We are all counting on you.

September 1, 2020

Vaccines — can an employer require them; should an employer require them?

There are currently more than two dozen COVID-19 vaccines in development worldwide as pharmaceutical companies race to perfect a viable vaccination to halt the ongoing pandemic.

When (and it’s a big when) one or more vaccines becomes available, can an employer require it of their employees as a condition of employment?

When the EEOC initially published its guidelines on pandemic preparedness 11 years ago (in response to the H1N1, aka Swine Flu pandemic) it answered this question with a “yes.”

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EEOC reissued its guidance.

May an employer covered by the ADA and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 compel all of its employees to take the influenza vaccine regardless of their medical conditions or their religious beliefs during a pandemic?

No. An employee may be entitled to an exemption from a mandatory vaccination requirement based on an ADA disability that prevents him from taking the influenza vaccine. This would be a reasonable accommodation barring undue hardship (significant difficulty or expense). Similarly, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once an employer receives notice that an employee’s sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance prevents him from taking the influenza vaccine, the employer must provide a reasonable accommodation unless it would pose an undue hardship as defined by Title VII.

ADA-covered employers should consider simply encouraging employees to get the influenza vaccine rather than requiring them to take it.

Here’s the thing. While the EEOC says that employer can’t require “all” of its employee to take a vaccine, an employer actually can require a vaccination subject to reasonable accommodation exceptions for ADA disabilities and sincerely held religious beliefs.

But just because an employer can mandate vaccines for most employees doesn’t necessarily mean that it should. Instead, I fall back to the EEOC’s closing statement about “encouraging employees” to get vaccines.

Mandating what employee does with his or her body feels too invasive and Big-Brothery to me. I’d prefer that employers arm employees with the knowledge they need to make an informed choice about the benefits of inoculations, and then strongly encourage employees to make the scientifically and medically responsible choice.

July 14, 2020

Should employers be testing employees for COVID-19?

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

Fortune magazine asks: “Why some companies are screening employees for COVID-19, while others have opted out?” This is a legitimate question.

Let’s start with the law. Does the law (in this case, the ADA) permit an employer to test employees for COVID-19? Yes, an employer absolutely may administer a COVID-19 test before permitting employees to enter the workplace.

From the EEOC:

[E]mployers may take steps to determine if employees entering the workplace have COVID-19 because an individual with the virus will pose a direct threat to the health of others. Therefore, an employer may choose to administer COVID-19 testing to employees before they enter the workplace to determine if they have the virus.

Just because employers can test doesn’t mean they should test. Why shouldn’t an employer test even though the law allows for it?

1/ Because these tests only measure a small slice of time, and therefore are not a reliable indicator of whether an employee is bringing COVID-19 into the workplace. Unless you are going to test every employee every day (see no. 2 below for why this isn’t feasible or practical), a negative test only establishes that an employee does not actively have the COVID-19 virus within their system at the time the test was administered.

2/ Because tests aren’t necessarily reliable. A team from John Hopkins Medicine has concluded that COVID-19 tests have a false negative rate of at least 20% if used too early after infection. If one in five employees who tests negative for COVID-19 is carrying the virus, why test at all?

3/ Because tests are expensive and not available in a large enough quantity. Testing every employee every day will cost an employer a small fortune, while at the same time unnecessarily using testing resources that could be put to better use (i.e., for those who actually have COVID-19 symptoms). It’s for this same reason (among others) that I believe restarting professional sports right now is crazy. Those players are being tested every single day, using up valuable testing resources that are in too short supply as is.

What should an employer do instead of testing? All employers should require employees to self-monitor for COVID-19 symptoms, and upon the presentation of any such symptoms, report to the employer and isolate per CDC guidelines. Thereafter, the employer should contact its local department of health, contact trace, and quarantine those who were in close contact as needed. That’s about the best you can hope to do to help stop this virus from spreading in your workplace. The law allows you to require testing if you want, but why bother?

June 23, 2020June 29, 2023

Must you accommodate an employee with a high-risk family member?

One of the questions I have received most from clients during this pandemic comes in some variation of the following: “An employee [does not want to come into work/wants to work from home/wants a leave of absence] because s/he lives with someone who is at high risk for coronavirus complications. What do we do?”

In other words, must you accommodate an employee for the employee’s close family member’s disability?

According to the EEOC, the answer is, “No.”

Is an employee entitled to an accommodation under the ADA in order to avoid exposing a family member who is at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 due to an underlying medical condition?

No. Although the ADA prohibits discrimination based on association with an individual with a disability, that protection is limited to disparate treatment or harassment. The ADA does not require that an employer accommodate an employee without a disability based on the disability-related needs of a family member or other person with whom she is associated.

For example, an employee without a disability is not entitled under the ADA to telework as an accommodation in order to protect a family member with a disability from potential COVID-19 exposure.

According to me, however, the answer is, “It depends” (on how you’ve historically treated similar requests by similarly situated employees).

The ADA not only protects employees with disabilities, but it also protects employees associated with individuals with disabilities. There is, however, one critical difference between these two types of protections. The former imposes on employers an obligation to offer reasonable accommodations, while the latter does not. This difference, however, does not mean that employers in all cases can deny accommodations to employees associated with individuals with disabilities.

If an employer has a history of accommodating employees similarly situated to an employee requesting an accommodation for an employee associated with someone at risk for coronavirus complications, the employer would be open to claim of disparate treatment by denying the employee’s accommodation request. Thus, an employer must scrutinize its decision to deny an accommodation request for an employee’s family member against similar requests by other similarly situated employees to avoid a claim of disparate treatment.

Of course, the ADA is a floor and not a ceiling. An employer is always free to accommodate any employee’s request for any reason. As the EEOC points out, “[A]n employer is free to provide such flexibilities if it chooses to do so.” Further, during the pandemic, the DOL “encourages employers and employees to collaborate to achieve flexibility and meet mutual needs.”

Moreover, there are myriad business reasons why an employer might choose to grant an accommodation in this case.

It’s the ethically or morally correct thing to do.
It will help you to retain a quality employee.
Granting the accommodation will create goodwill, strengthening the employee’s loyalty to your company.
You will avoid the potential for bad press or negative social media if you deny the request, or worse, fire an employee seeking an accommodation under these circumstances.

For these reasons, I generally favor granting the accommodation. Unless there is a legitimate and overriding business reason to deny an accommodation request to an employee who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, seeks remote work or a leave of absence because he or she does not want to endanger a high-risk family member, grant the request. It’s the right thing to do, and, depending on the circumstances, it might also be the legal thing to do.

May 4, 2020June 29, 2023

Labor compliance software sorts through complex legal issues

Labor compliance software is an innovative way to manage the overwhelming alphabet soup of laws, regulations and agencies that govern the workplace.

HR practitioners must recognize the regulatory distinctions of the FMLA and FLSA and navigate the nuances between the ADA and ADAAA. What are the latest regulations surrounding the ACA? Can a misstep with COBRA come back to bite them? And SOX … is that a professional baseball team or a law protecting corporate whistleblowers?

If assessing guidance from agencies including OSHA, DOL and EEOC wasn’t enough to cope with, labor compliance software is a must-have now as the coronavirus invades organizational policies. HR leaders and corporate counsel must quickly familiarize themselves and understand the implications of implementing workplace laws surrounding a new bowl of alphabet soup — PPP, FFCRA and the CARES Act.

The value of labor compliance software

Maintaining corporate compliance with government regulations isn’t easy. Besides knowing what agencies actually do and how regulations affect employers, labor laws are dense, complex and confusing. A single unintentional compliance misstep by an organization can lead to a costly and time-consuming lawsuit with the potential to disrupt or even bankrupt a small, growing organization.

Compliance solutions allow organizations to avoid a trip to court and more easily comprehend constantly changing federal, state and local legislation. Employers can disseminate policies to employees, provide guidelines for regulatory enforcement and manage confidential documents all while saving money by easing time-consuming, onerous reporting rules.

Workforce management systems typically assist with traditional compliance issues while a specialized compliance solution takes employers beyond the basics and provides expert guidance on critical regulations. It can be like having a team of legal experts at your fingertips with minimal expense.

Labor compliance software also allows businesses to communicate company and legislative policies to their employees.

Key areas for compliance software

Regulatory software helps an HR department remain in compliance across all organizational departments. According to peer-to-peer software review site G2, there are business functions and the germane laws that can be undertaken by labor compliance software:

Benefits — Affordable Care Act (ACA); Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA); Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA); Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA); Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA); Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

COVID-19-related policies — Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act); Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and Payment Protection Program (PPP).

Labor and employment relations — Labor union updates (AFL-CIO, AFGE, SEIU, etc.); Department of Labor (DOL); Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); National Labor Relations Board (NLRB); Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).

Payroll — Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA); Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA); Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA); Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).

Risk — Employee safety is a top priority for all organizations. Compliance software can manage and track guidance and enforcement by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Companies needing compliance software

No organization is immune from U.S., state and local labor laws. True, regulations often vary depending on factors including employee count. A four-person mom-and-pop shop does not face the same labor compliance regulations as a multinational company.

Yet it is crucial that company policies remain up to date and comply with changes in legislation. Despite the expense a lawsuit can present, many smaller organizations are hesitant to call on legal resources simply based on costs. Those concerns can be streamlined by compliance software.

Small companies have difficulty keeping up with changes in compliance because they lack the manpower, and HR departments are already stretched thin or responsibilities are divided among employees as collateral duty. There is no point person to track and update compliance regulations.

Compliance is particularly crucial to navigating the maze of workplace issues. Municipalities and some states have instituted fair workweek policies in the past two years with more on the horizon.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, mandatory sexual harassment prevention training is compulsory in six states. Compliance training, employee handbooks and more can be structured and simplified with a compliance solution.

Small and midsize organizations in particular have difficulty keeping up with HR compliance regulations as new legislation is continually introduced. When the HR team is small (or even just one person), their bandwidth quickly becomes strained.

Sorting through the alphabet soup of labor regulations can be an eye-glazing exercise for employers. Labor compliance software helps them to spell out attractive cost-savings, easy-to-use solutions and avoid unintentional noncompliance.