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February 24, 2025
NEENAH – State, federal and even local labor laws require employers with at least one employee to post labor law notifications at all of their locations.
Failure to post such notifications can cost a company hundreds, even, thousands of dollars in fines.
But, staying on top of the requirements and remaining in compliance, especially if those labor laws change frequently, can be a daunting task for employers, Terri Dougherty, subject-matter expert and content team editor at J. J. Keller, said.
In 2024, Dougherty said there were more than 80 mandatory state labor law posting changes.
“With more than 20 state changes already, 2025 is shaping up to be another busy year for posting compliance,” she said. “Keeping up with posting requirements can be time-consuming and cumbersome.”
Dougherty said posters must be put up where people report for work – so if employees work in more than one building, posters must be in all the buildings.
Further complicating compliance, she said, is if an employer has offices in multiple states or if they have remote workers working partially or completely from home.
“We have compiled all these posting requirements because we know what’s required everywhere, and we’ve created (individual) posters based on federal needs, state needs or sometimes local needs,” she said. “Then we keep them updated. We have also taken the postings that are created by a state, local or federal government and put them in an all-in-one poster. Our all-in-one poster does make it a little bit more convenient to post all your generally required posters.”
Dougherty said every poster is required under a different law.
“There are hundreds of laws, and they include a section that says you must make employees aware of their rights under this law by displaying a poster,” she said. “That’s one reason why it’s so complicated, because there’s no one single law. It’s also complicated when you have out-of-state workers. But, labor laws require that employees be given access to the posters that apply to the state in which they reside. They really want you to display this information about employee rights and to make sure it’s available wherever the employees are working.”
Updated postings, Dougherty said, can be made available to remote workers via electronic notification or by letting employees know how and where they can access them online.
“We have an electronic posting service,” she said. “So, if your employees are working from home, they can access the posters online. In all cases, it’s a best practice to let them know how they can access them online because if an employee doesn’t have access to labor law posters that tell them about their rights, and then something happens… an employee (can) say, ‘You didn’t tell me that’ – it could be a problem for the employer.”
Dougherty said employers can take solace in knowing that if they find staying on top of changes to be frustrating and complicated, it’s not just them.
“If they’re trying to keep up with all the changes, it’s not easy – especially if you have businesses in multiple states, it’s a lot to keep up with,” she said.
Staying on top of laws for employers
Dougherty said J. J. Keller has a Poster Monitoring Team, which consists of three people and a supervisor who monitors every poster for every law or regulation.
“We check to see if a poster has changed; if there is a change; or if there is a new law out there – and is it something where we have to get this update to our customers,” she said. “Every couple of weeks that team checks hundreds of postings online for state, federal and local (regulations) to see if there are any changes.”
Dougherty said that this kind of frequency helps ensure the company can stay on top of any and all changes that may have occurred.
Taking things one step further with its support, Dougherty said J. J. Keller has a team of poster designers who put together the various posters needed.
“We look at the posting requirements very carefully to determine whether there is a size requirement, so if we have to make the posting a certain size, but also whether we have to use the exact graphic layout from the state or federal agency, or is only the text of the posting required,” she said. “Can we just take the text – the required information – and put it in our own format, so it’s sort of a space saver format.”
Dougherty said J. J. Keller also, from time to time, offers webinars that employers can watch.
“Usually in December or January, and sometimes in the summer, we’ll have a poster webcast where we talk about posters,” she said. “We try to make it fun. I’ve done poster webcasts with a mystery theme or a poetry theme to try to make it fun so people can enjoy the compliance information and remember how they’re supposed to post.”
One step further
All of this, Dougherty said, recently prompted J. J. Keller to take its support for employers further and offer a free resource – “5 Reasons to Pay Attention to Labor Law Posters” – online (jjkellerlaborlawposters.com).
“The first reason is you might be fined,” she said. “Every posting is required under a different law. Some of those laws do have a fine if you willfully refuse to display a posting.”
Dougherty said fines can range from several hundred to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the posting and the circumstances surrounding a company’s failure to post, etc.
“If you add every federal fine together, you could face fines of more than $43,000,” she said.
Another reason to keep postings current and properly displayed, Dougherty said, is because it helps employers lower the risk of a lawsuit from employees.
“There have been cases where an employee has a long amount of time to file a lawsuit because the employer did not have the poster up, because the poster makes the employees aware of their rights,” she said. “In some cases, it’ll say on the poster that you have so many days or years to file a lawsuit. If employees don’t have that information because they’ve not been told, they have a longer amount of time to file that lawsuit.”
In addition, Dougherty said the online resource offers tips on keeping posters updated and making sure employers are posting everything they need to.
Though many postings are required for all employers, she said some are required based on the number of employees an employer has, and so forth.
Dougherty said the all-inclusive resource – also available on J. J. Keller’s website – “will list the posting title and who must post.”
Additional supports
Dougherty said J. J. Keller offers federal, state, local and wage order posters for all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, plus:
- An update service – which ships free posters anytime there’s a mandatory change
- Electronic labor law posting management service – designed for easy compliance with labor law requirements for remote workers
- E-verify/right-to-work poster printing service – which aims to help streamline compliance by having J. J. Keller print posters
- Canadian labor law posters and update service – designed for companies with locations in Canada
“We have people who subscribe to our poster service,” she said. “Sometimes posters have a mandatory change – like if the minimum wage would change, then you’d need to put up a new poster.”
Dougherty said the J. J. Keller team keeps track of all the mandatory changes and “then we ship our update service customers a new poster, whenever there’s a mandatory change.”
“Basically, we do the work for them,” she said. “One benefit to a customer getting our posters or our update service is they do get access to free expert help – which would be me or my co-workers.”
Some states, Dougherty said, have a greater number of required posters than other states.
“If you’re in California, you need a lot of posters,” she said. “If you’re in San Francisco, the number of state, federal and local postings you need is just incredible.”
Dougherty said Wisconsin is an average state when it comes to required postings.
“We’re right in the middle with what we require,” she said. “On average, employers will need a new poster every year or so. There was just an update in January 2024 for the unemployment insurance posting. That was the most recent change for Wisconsin. Wisconsin employers do have to be aware of updates because they do happen, but probably not every year. Wisconsin employers also need to post federal posters, however. Those are going to update every few years, so you really have to watch for those changes, as well.”
Dougherty said employers also need to be aware that some of the executive orders being issued on the federal level most likely won’t require new postings – but they might change the federal Know Your Rights poster.
“The way the poster is worded and the way some executive orders were worded, they don’t mesh,” she said. “So, something has to be changed on that Know Your Rights poster to make it mesh with the executive orders. There are two of them that make information on that Know Your Rights poster outdated. So, all employers should watch carefully to see if that Know Your Rights poster is updated. And that’s something that if you have 15 or more employees you have to display.”
Dougherty said the government wants employers to take posting compliance seriously.
“You can’t hide the postings in the closet – you have to put them someplace where employees can see them, such as by an entrance or a cafeteria,” she said. “It’s important to make sure employees have easy access to these posters. Also, they have to be readable. An employer just can’t reduce the size.”
