Employment Resources

Beginning with 2009 plan years, employers will be required to file Form 5500 for pension and other employee benefit plans electronically. Mandatory electronic filing — known as the ERISA Filing Acceptance System, or EFAST2 — was slated to become effective for 2008 plan year filings, but in final regulations implementing the electronic filing requirement the agencies with Form 5500 oversight (the Department of Labor, Internal Revenue Service and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation) delayed mandatory electronic filing to the 2009 plan year. Since Form 5500 is due at the end of the seventh month after the close of the plan year, this means that employers with calendar year plans will have a first required electronic filing deadline of July 31, 2010.

The Form 5500 Annual Return/Report is the primary source of information concerning the operation, funding, assets and investments of pensions and other employee benefit plans. Form 5500 filings serve as a disclosure document for plan participants and beneficiaries, a compliance and research tool for the agencies with 5500 oversight, and a source of information and data for assessing pension and employee benefit trends and developing policy.

Electronic filing is intended to streamline and simplify the filing process, especially for small businesses; increase the transparency of plan-related fees and expenses; and provide additional information about plan investments. To this end, some schedules associated with 5500 filing that were required only for the IRS have been eliminated, and other schedules have been modified. Specifically, Schedule E for ESOP information and Schedule SSA (identifying separated participants with deferred vested benefits) will no longer be required once e-filing is fully implemented (i.e., beginning with reporting for the 2009 plan year). Information previously included on these schedules will be captured in other ways.

Certain small plans (single-employer plans covering fewer than 100 participants, which meet specified conditions regarding their investments held or issued by regulated financial institutions, and which have a readily determinable fair market value) will be able to file a Form 5500SF (Short Form) instead of the regular 5500.

As to specific attachments:

• Schedule A (Insurance Information) is required if any pension or welfare benefits under the plan are provided by, or if the plan holds any investment contracts with, an insurance company, insurance service, or other similar organization. Schedule A remains largely unchanged, but will now include a space for administrators to report a failure or refusal by an insurance carrier to provide necessary information. Other minor changes are intended to improve Schedule A’s usefulness for reporting insurance fees or commissions.
• Schedule B (Defined Benefit Plan Actuarial Information) has been divided into two separate schedules, Schedule SB for single employer plans and Schedule MB for multiemployer plans and certain money purchase plans. These schedules are required for defined benefit plans subject to minimum funding standards. In general, the revised schedules will require more detailed information on asset allocation.
• Schedule C (Service Provider Information) is filed by large plans, to report payments made to service providers. The $5,000 reporting threshold has been retained for identifying any person who received at least this amount during the plan year, directly or indirectly, in connection with services rendered to the plan or their position with the plan. To enhance disclosure, direct compensation paid by the plan will be reported on a separate line item from indirect compensation received from sources other than the plan or plan sponsor. Additionally, current codes have expanded to better identify the types of services and types of fees. The schedule includes an alternate reporting option for service providers whose compensation in relation to the plan is limited to “eligible indirect compensation” (certain specified types of common investment-related fees). As with Schedule A, revised Schedule C includes space for plan administrators to list service providers who failed or refused to provide information necessary to complete the schedule.
• Schedule R (Retirement Plan Information) will now ask for information previously requested in the eliminated Schedule E. Other modifications include additional questions required by the Pension Protection Act of 2006 and to collect information needed by the PBGC to enable it to properly monitor the plans it insures. For example, the schedule now includes asset allocation questions for defined benefit plans with more than 1,000 participants, which now must provide a breakdown of plan assets by type of investment.
• Schedule I (Small Plan Financial Information) will require small plans to report administrative expenses separately from other expenses. On both this schedule and Schedule H (for large plans) a standard format has been adopted for use in connection with an independent qualified public accountant rendering an opinion on information relating to delinquent participant contributions.

As noted at the beginning of this article, full electronic filing begins with filings for the 2009 plan year. For many plans, compliance will require updating information management and recordkeeping systems and necessitate changes in the way plans collect and keep plan information. Consult with your plan administrator or one of our benefits professionals for what your company needs to do to prepare.

Due to the possibility of a serious flu pandemic, the U.S. Government is asking business leaders to make response plans for a range of flu outbreak scenarios. For this flu season, predictions range from a moderate increase in flu-related absenteeism, to a full-blown influenza pandemic. The most up-to-date information regarding flu risk can be found online at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site; on the World Health Organization Web site; as well as on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Web site (refer to Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to the 2009-2010 Influenza Season).

For both business and public health reasons, it is critical for employers to be ready for the possibility of a pandemic. A pandemic might involve your clients as well as your workforce, as employers face the potential for supply chain disruptions, workforce shortages, and even panic among employees and their family members.

Business experts and government officials have developed the following guidelines to help business leaders coordinate plans in the event of a pandemic:

Identify a Team

Name a pandemic coordinator or team with specific responsibilities for preparing and response planning. Go over emergency preparedness plans with your identified team members. Remember that your planning process needs to remain fluid and dependent on circumstances, not a fixed or finite plan.

Communicate with Your Employees

Have emergency communication systems and plans in place. Communicate pandemic preparedness and response plans to employees and, if necessary, to your customers and suppliers.

Educate your employees on flu preparedness. By involving employees, they might feel less anxious and more in control. Stress the importance of the message that employees should stay home when they are sick.

Prepare for Widespread Absenteeism

Create a plan for how critical functions will be carried out elsewhere if work sites must be closed temporarily. Review health care, disability, and leave policies with employees. So that tasks can be handled by more than one person, provide cross-training to employees. Whenever possible, plan to have employees work remotely. Create policies for reducing travel to affected geographic areas.

Immunize and Sanitize

Set up immunization clinics for your workforce through your EAP or insurer. Encourage employees to practice good hygiene by washing hands, using sanitizers, and covering their mouths and noses with a tissue when coughing or sneezing. It is also recommended to avoid touching eyes, nose, or mouth, as this is a good way to spread germs.

Remain Informed

Consult the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services site, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site, and the World Health Organization site.

When times get tough economically, both businesses and individuals alike examine how they can cut expenses. For a business, this could mean looking for ways to cut costs in the employee benefits program. Health benefits, which carry the highest tab in most companies’ benefits programs, might seem like the most reasonable target for cost cutting measures. But before taking a knife to your health plan and/or other aspects of your company’s benefits program, it’s important to consider the possible consequences and alternatives. Large premium increases can cause employees to drop coverage, in particular younger, more healthy employees, leaving your plan with a less desirable risk pool. Cost-shifting that involves higher copayments and/or deductibles can cause employees to defer routine care, delay seeing a doctor when symptoms of illness first arise, and fail to fill prescribed medications. In the long run, these decisions can end up not only costing your health plan money, but also add to absenteeism and disability costs and lower employee productivity and morale.

As an alternative, make sure that your benefits dollars are being applied to measures that enhance employee health and well-being. These include:

• Generous coverage for preventive care.
• Incentives for participation in activities designed to detect potentially serious medical conditions, such as health risk assessments and health screenings for blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
• Incentives for participation in other wellness activities, such as smoking cessation classes, weight loss efforts, nutrition counseling and fitness activities.
• Making available employee assistance programs (EAPs). An EAP can be particularly important to employees during trying economic times, providing a resource for or referral to financial counseling, as well as stress management and crisis intervention services.
  If cost shifting is a must, there are ways to soften the impact on employees:
• Flexible spending accounts (FSAs) enable employees to pay for health care expenses with before-tax dollars. This lets employees get the most out of the dollars they use for health care.
• Consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs), which couple a high-deductible health plan with a health savings account (HSA), make employees more conscious of how they are spending their HSA dollars, since these funds can carry over year after year.
• Voluntary benefits can add a wide range of personalized options to an employer’s benefits program, at little or no cost to the company. At the same time, they offer employees cost savings and convenience over finding and purchasing these benefits on their own in the individual market.

All of the above require employees to become more involved in the management of their benefits and of their own health. Whether it be participating in wellness activities, keeping on top of scheduling regular preventive care, thinking ahead and budgeting for anticipated health care needs, or researching provider networks to find the most appropriate care at the most cost-effective price, all of these measures enhance individual involvement. And, in the long run, the individual responsibility your employees assume for their health care and benefits management can serve as one of the most important cost-management tools you’ll ever find.

The number of Americans with chronic health conditions continues to grow, so that today more than half of insured individuals are taking a prescription medication to treat at least one chronic health condition. With a health care system more attuned to treating episodes of illness rather than long-term chronic conditions, employers can find themselves especially challenged to come up with ways to moderate the health care costs and productivity losses that result from their employees’ chronic illnesses.

Reports from various sources document the increase in the number of Americans with chronic health conditions, along with the costs associated with these long-term illnesses—

• According to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the number of working age adults with at least one of seven major chronic conditions (heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, asthma, emphysema, cancer) grew 25% since 1997, to a total of 58 million by the end of 2006. Individuals with these conditions account for three-quarters of all personal medical spending in the United States. However, even at that rate of spending, these folks still might not be receiving the care and treatment they need to effectively manage their conditions: Among the insured with a chronic health condition, the share unable to meet their prescription drug needs doubled from 5% in 1997 to 9.5% in 2006.
• Pharmacy benefit manager Medco Health Solutions reports that, in 2007, 51% of insured Americans were taking prescription drugs to treat at least one chronic health condition, and 20% used three or more medications for chronic conditions. Though this trend was most pronounced among seniors, it also was seen among younger individuals. For example, 48% of women ages 20–44 are being treated for a chronic condition, with the most common condition being depression. But, in general, prescription drug treatments for high cholesterol and high blood pressure were the ones most used by those with chronic health conditions, with more than 20% taking hypertensives and almost one in seven taking cholesterol-lowering drugs.
• According to a report from researchers at Johns Hopkins University, 65¢ of every health care dollar spent in the United States is for treatment of people with two or more chronic health conditions, and this group represents only 26% of the population. Individuals with at least one chronic condition have yearly health care spending more than five times greater than those with no chronic conditions. After pondering this data, it’s clear that employers will want to do what they can to moderate the impact of their employees’ chronic health conditions on health care costs and workplace productivity. It’s best to attack the problem on a number of fronts, and here are some approaches to consider—
• Since prescription drugs are a staple in the treatment of chronic health conditions, a prescription benefit with employee copayment pricing that strongly encourages use of generics will be important to cost management.
• Many chronic conditions are closely related to obesity (hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, osteoarthritis). Therefore, wellness programs that feature weight management tools can motivate and assist employees in their efforts to exercise, lose weight and develop eating habits that avoid the high fat/high sodium/high sugar foods that can exacerbate certain chronic conditions.
• Disease management programs can target individuals with chronic conditions and actively work with them to help them manage their diseases. Services can include monitoring prescription drug compliance and sending refill reminders, educating members on their chronic condition, providing information on self care, and making sure that individuals are seeing a physician as is appropriate for their condition.

With any of these approaches, the goal is that better management of a chronic condition will reduce hospitalizations and emergency room visits—which are among the costliest forms of health care—and decrease the times that a chronically ill employee must miss work on account of the illness. Realizing these goals can help to control health care costs and improve employee productivity, while enhancing the quality of chronically ill employees’ lives.

Most employers’ investment in the benefits packages they provide to employees is significant. According to data from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, employee benefits account for close to a third of employee compensation costs, an average $8.63 per hour worked (includes legally required benefits such as Social Security). With such an investment, employers of all sizes want these benefits to engender loyalty within the workforce. In smaller businesses, benefits do play this role to some degree, according to a survey from MetLife, but employers are not utilizing their benefits packages to their full strategic advantage.

MetLife polled employees and benefits decision makers in companies with at least two employees. More than half—55%—of the employers with fewer than 500 employees said that benefits play a very important role in employee retention. However, only 34% of employees at companies of this size said the benefits they receive are a very important reason to remain with their current employer, compared to 53% of employees at larger companies. This last finding is somewhat puzzling, since among employers that offer benefits, a higher percentage of smaller employers contrasted to larger employers pay the full cost for many benefits, including medical, dental and prescription drug coverage. Specifically, 36% of smaller employers paid the entire cost of employees’ medical coverage and 29% footed the full bill for prescription drug coverage, compared to 15% and 13%, respectively, of larger firms that did this for employees.

Whether or not your company is among those that pick up the full tab for certain employee benefits, you do invest significantly in the benefits you provide, and you want to realize a good return on this investment. The key to maximizing this is to take steps to use benefits strategically.

Using benefits strategically requires that the benefits your company offers are those that your employees really need and want. Although you can safely assume that medical, some type of retirement plan, and time-off programs would top this list, beyond these employees’ benefits needs can vary greatly. If you haven’t done so recently, get input from employees—through surveys, focus groups, even a suggestion box—as to what’s on their benefits “wish list.” You might find that some of the most coveted benefits are those that require little financial investment, though they could demand some creative thinking on your part. For example, flex-time, job sharing and telecommuting are prized by many workers, and if you are able to figure out a way to implement them in your company you will score a hit with employees without dipping into the benefits budget.

Similarly, you can greatly expand your menu of benefits offerings at little or no cost through voluntary benefits. Your company can give employees convenient access to coverages such as dental, vision, hearing, group legal, various types of Life insurance, and disability through a voluntary benefits strategy. Though employees pay the full cost of voluntary benefits, they generally get a good price because they’re purchasing at a group rate; plus, they save time not having to shop for the benefits in the open market and have the convenience of paying for them through payroll deduction. Most importantly, since employees choose which, if any, voluntary benefits to enroll in, they’re only paying for what they’ve decided they want and need, which is important, psychologically, to feeling that they’ve gotten their money’s worth.

Finally, regardless of the benefits you decide to offer to employees, don’t skimp on communications. The MetLife survey suggests inadequate communications might be part of the cause for employees’ under-appreciation of their benefits, with only about a third of both smaller employers and their workers rating their benefits communications as highly effective. Where to start in shoring up your benefits communications? Consider personalization, for which 54% of employees in smaller companies expressed a preference.

The obesity epidemic has been growing in the United States for some time. Estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that 66% of U.S. adults are either overweight (body mass index, or BMI, of 25.0-29.9) or obese (BMI of 30.0 or more). Rates also are rising among members of tomorrow’s workforce: Children and teens. Among children ages 2-5 years, 13.9% are obese; ages 6-11, 18.8%; and ages 12-19, 17.4%. The rate of individuals with morbid obesity — a BMI of 40.0 or more — has grown to the point that in 2007 an estimated 205,000 individuals had bariatric surgery, according to the American Society for Bariatric Surgery.

It is well known that obesity is associated with a long list of health concerns: High blood pressure, diabetes, osteoarthritis, high cholesterol, heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, and some types of cancer (endometrial, breast and colon). Therefore, findings reported in a recent Conference Board release, Weights and Measures: What Employers Should Know About Obesity, should come as no surprise. According to the report, obesity is associated with a 36% increase in spending on health care services, more than smoking or drinking. Obese employees cost U.S. private employers an estimated $45 billion annually in medical expenses and work loss.

In response, more than 40% of U.S. companies have implemented obesity-reduction programs for employees, the report states, and 24% more are planning to do so. But, according to the report, employers need to weigh the risks of being too intrusive in managing obese employees against the risks of not managing them.

Employer initiatives can range from implementation of wellness programs to making simple changes in the workplace designed to help employees be more active and eat healthier. The Conference Board notes that estimates of return on investment (ROI) for wellness programs range from zero to $5 for every $1 invested in such a program. In addition to ROI, wellness programs can give a company an edge when it comes to retention and recruiting.

Regardless of your budget, there are steps your company can take in your workplace to fight the obesity epidemic head-on, and to lessen the toll it’s taking on your bottom line. Short of building an onsite fitness center, you can:

• Encourage employees to get moving on the job. Discourage elevator use by making stairwells attractive or by using them as a place to post employee photos, brief interesting news articles, or funny anecdotes and comics. Ask employees to gather for an afternoon break, and play 10 minutes of salsa music with someone leading the moves, followed by a piece of fruit for everyone.
• Install bike racks in preferred parking positions or permit employees to house their bikes inside the building during the workday.
• Stock vending machines with water and healthy snacks. If your company has a cafeteria, be sure that the menu includes a salad bar and predominantly fresh, low-fat food choices.
• Sponsor a company softball or soccer team. Encourage employees to sign up and participate as a group in fundraising walks or runs that take place in your community.
• Arrange to make a program like Weight Watchers at Work available at your worksite.
• Offer incentives for employee participation in health risk assessments.
• Check with any local gyms or fitness facilities for the availability of group discounts for your employees.
• Finally, your company probably already pays for health benefits, so check to see what wellness, nutrition and/or fitness programs are provided by or covered under the plan. Become an active partner with your health benefits carrier in marketing any of these offerings to your employees.

Though national rates of obesity are growing, you can buck the trend in your workplace — it just takes initiative and a few creative ideas to get started. Your employees’ health — and your company’s bottom line — will be better off as a result.

Myriad federal laws apply to employment matters, and sometimes a company needs a legal adviser simply to determine whether it is subject to a particular rule or requirement. Now, the government is offering some assistance in taking this initial step toward compliance. The U.S. Department of Labor has launched a Web site, the FirstStep Employment Law Advisor, to help employers determine which major federal employment laws administered by the DOL apply to them.

To use the service, you answer a series of questions, including the nature of your business, number of employees, whether you employ any disabled or foreign workers, whether you have any union contracts, whether you offer retirement and health plans, whether you have federal contracts, and your location. The information the site generates will depend on which of its three features you have decided to use.

• FirstStep Employment Law Overview Advisor will provide you with a summary of the basic requirements of each law determined to apply to your business, together with related recordkeeping, reporting and notice requirements.
• FirstStep Recordkeeping, Reporting and Notices Advisor will give detailed explanations of these requirements for each applicable law.
• FirstStep Poster Advisor will provide links to legally required posters for the workplace, together with information on the laws establishing these poster requirements.

If applicable, the information provided will include links to published or online compliance assistance materials (such as guides and fact sheets), model notices required for employees (such as under COBRA), and forms for required filings (such as Form 5500). Contact information for departments within the DOL and other federal and state agencies are also provided.

If an employer already knows what federal employment laws apply, the service can be used to access basic compliance information on recordkeeping, reporting, and poster requirements.

As noted above, this service covers major federal employment laws administered by the DOL. It does not cover all laws administered by the DOL, nor does it cover federal laws administered by other agencies, or state or local laws (but links are provided to some of these outside sources). Though the site focuses only on the major DOL-administered federal laws, it can be a good “first step” to legal compliance with federal employment laws.

Access FirstStep at http://www.dol.gov/elaws/FirstStep/. The service is free.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a set of frequently asked questions, with answers, on health savings accounts (HSAs). The 42 FAQs included in Notice 2008-59 cover a wide range of topics, including who is eligible for an HSA, and issues related to high deductible health plans (HDHPs), HSA contributions and HSA distributions. This article summarizes some of the clarifications found in Notice 2008-59.

ELIGIBLE INDIVIDUALS

If an employer pays for or reimburses all or a part of an individual’s health expenses below the HDHP deductible (other than expenses for preventive care or other disregarded coverage), that individual will not be eligible to contribute to an HSA.

An individual who is eligible for, but not enrolled in, Medicare Part D, is eligible for an HSA, but once that individual has enrolled in Medicare Part D, he or she ceases to be HSA-eligible.

An individual can be covered under a health plan in addition to the HDHP, so long as that plan’s deductible is at least the statutory minimum deductible. The example given is of an individual with an HDHP with a lifetime benefit maximum of $1 million, who also is covered under a second health plan with a $1 million deductible and a $2 million lifetime benefit maximum.

Individuals who receive free or reduced-price health care from an employer’s onsite clinic can be HSA-eligible, so long as the clinic does not provide “significant benefits in the nature of medical care.” In an example, an onsite clinic that provided physicals and immunizations, allergy injections, nonprescription pain relievers and treatment for work accidents was not considered to provide significant benefits. In contrast, a hospital that provided free medical care to uninsured employees, and that waived deductibles and copayments for insured employees, was considered to provide significant benefits, and its employees would not be HSA-eligible.

HIGH DEDUCTIBLE HEALTH PLANS

To determine when an individual who switches from family HDHP to self-only HDHP coverage satisfies the self-only deductible, the plan may use any reasonable method to allocate the covered expenses incurred during the period of family coverage. Examples given of reasonable methods include considering only those expenses incurred by the individual and not those incurred by other family members, or allocating expenses on a per-capita basis according to the number of persons who had been covered under the family HDHP. Also, if the family deductible had been satisfied, the plan may treat the self-only deductible as satisfied.

If a plan imposes a separate or higher deductible for specific benefits — such as for substance abuse — amounts paid toward satisfying that deductible are not treated as out-of-pocket expenses for purposes of satisfying the HDHP minimum annual deductible, so long as significant other benefits remain available under the plan in addition to the benefits that are subject to the separate deductible.

HSA CONTRIBUTIONS

If two spouses are eligible for HSA coverage and one spouse has self-only HDHP coverage and the other spouse has family HDHP coverage, the maximum annual HSA contribution for the married couple is the statutory maximum for family coverage. The same applies if each spouse has family HDHP coverage that does not cover the other spouse. The spouses need to divide the contribution limit by agreement.

An individual who ceases to be eligible to make HSA contributions during the year may still make contributions with respect to the months of the year when he or she was eligible, up to the time for filing his or her tax return.

Employer HSA contributions, including salary reduction contributions, may be allocated to the prior year if made between January 1 and the date for filing returns.

If an employer mistakenly makes HSA contributions to the account of an employee who was never an eligible individual, the HSA is considered to have never existed and the employer may correct the error. If amounts are not recovered by the end of the taxable year, they must be included as gross income on the employee’s W-2 for the year in which the contributions were made.

HSA DISTRIBUTIONS

An HSA may be administered through a debit card that is restricted to health care items, so long as HSA funds are also readily available through other means.

An HSA account beneficiary can authorize someone else to withdraw funds from the HSA.

Medicare Part D premiums are qualified medical expenses for account beneficiaries who have attained age 65. If the account beneficiary has not attained age 65, Medicare premiums for an age 65 or older spouse are not qualified medical expenses.

These are just a sampling of the FAQs from the array of guidance provided under Notice 2008-59. For further information on the notice and which aspects of it might be most relevant to your company and your health care plan, consult with one of our benefits professionals.

Prescription drug use in the United States is on the rise, both for acute and chronic conditions, according to data from two pharmacy benefit managers. Express Scripts reports the number of people with at least one prescription increased from 67% to 74% between 2000 and 2006, while Medco Health Solutions estimates that more than half of the insured U.S. population took prescription medication in 2007 for a chronic health condition.

According to Express Scripts’ Geographic Variation in Prescription Drug Utilization study, in addition to the increase in the number of Americans using prescribed medications, the intensity of use rose, too. In 2000, the number of prescriptions per person using a prescribed medication was 10.8, and this increased to 14.3 by 2006. The drug therapy classes experiencing the most growth were antihyperlipidemics (for controlling cholesterol and triglyceride levels), antidiabetics (diabetes) and antihypertensives (blood pressure).

Medco’s study found that 51% of insured U.S. adults and children were being treated with prescribed medication for a chronic condition in 2007. Additionally, this study reports that 20% of the population uses three or more prescription drug treatments for chronic conditions. The most widely used drugs were those prescribed to battle high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.

Both reports point to obesity as a key factor in explaining their findings. For example, the Express Scripts report, which examines geographic variations, found a high correlation between state level obesity rates and use of medications for diabetes and high blood pressure, and a medium correlation between obesity rates and use of medication for high cholesterol.

Other factors that could be contributing to increased prescription drug use, as suggested in the Express Scripts report, include greater compliance rates, more dual therapy, higher screening rates for certain conditions, earlier initiation of drug treatment, and growing willingness on the part of physicians to use drug therapy instead of other types of treatment. Additionally, due to various advances in medical care, many once-fatal conditions have evolved to become chronic conditions, treatable by maintenance medications. Add the growing number of drug therapies now available for conditions that previously went untreated (erectile dysfunction, sleeping disorders, a variety of mental health-related issues), along with direct-to-consumer advertising by drug makers, and this trend of increased prescription drug usage seems sure to continue.

Need assistance in assessing your prescription drug benefits? Contact our office today.

Look on the walls of any business and you’ll find one thing in common: Whether in the employee cafeteria or lunchroom, near the punch clock where workers begin and end their day, or in some other conspicuous place, employers have posted the various legal notices required by law that inform workers of their rights. The federal government requires this of most employers for a handful of employee rights, depending on the size of the business and whether it is a private or public enterprise; additional postings might be required in some circumstances, for example, if the business has federal contracts. State laws also may require separate additional postings.

As a business owner you’re bound to be familiar with the posting requirements, but did you realize that in order to ensure your compliance, you should review these requirements from time to time? That’s because changes to a law can require changes to the required notices. For example, increases in the minimum wage, either at the federal or state level, can mean that it’s time to replace the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) poster currently on your wall.

Here’s a list of the required postings with a brief explanation of each:

• “Equal Employment Opportunity Is the Law” — Every employer covered by nondiscrimination and equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws must post this notice on its premises. The poster consolidates the EEO requirements under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Equal Pay Act, effectively covering employee rights based on race/color/religion/sex/national origin, disability, age, and sex (wages). The notice must be posted prominently, both for employees and applicants for employment. The posting requirement applies to employers with 15 or more employees, with some additional requirements for federal contractors.
• “Employee Rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act” — This poster sets out the minimum wage, and information on overtime pay, youth employment, and tip credit. Because the minimum wage has undergone some changes recently, this is one of the posters you should check for compliance.
• “Job Safety and Health — It’s the Law!” — All employers must display this required posting from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that guarantees employees a safe workplace and spells out their rights if they believe there are workplace hazards or health issues.
• “Your Rights Under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act” — All employers must post this notice, which describes the re-employment rights, nondiscrimination guarantees, and health insurance protection for military service personnel and reservists.
• “Notice — Employee Polygraph Protection Act” — Most private employers must post this notice, which sets out restrictions on employer use of lie detector tests and employee rights under the limited circumstances in which a polygraph would be allowed.
• “Your Rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993” — Employers with 50 or more employees must display this poster, which sets out reasons for taking FMLA leave, employee notice and medical certification requirements, job and benefits protection guaranteed by the law, and enforcement. With the recent FMLA expansion that added leave events to care for an injured or ill service member and to tend to an exigency caused by the active duty or call to duty of a service member, this is another poster that you should check for compliance.

As noted above, additional postings might be required, particularly for federal contractors, or based on state-by-state law. Also, you might want to go beyond the legal requirements and also post notices of employee rights under other laws, such as those related to jury duty, COBRA, ERISA, etc.

Most of these posters are available free of charge from the government agency responsible for enforcing the applicable law. There are also vendors who publish these posters, and some make available a single poster that consolidates the basic required notices, so that you can meet your compliance requirement with a single posting.