Remote work has permanently changed where work happens, but it has not changed most employers’ legal obligations. One of the more deceptively tricky areas is employment law posters: those mandatory notices that used to live quietly on a breakroom wall and now need to exist in a world where the “workplace” might be a laptop on a kitchen table in another state. Poster compliance is often easy to overlook and can be surprisingly easy to get wrong.
If you employ people, you are required to post things. Lots of things. Colorful, densely worded, often ignored things. Employment law posters have been a compliance staple for decades, traditionally taped to a breakroom wall near the microwave. Then remote work happened, and suddenly that wall was in someone’s home office three states away.
So what, exactly, are employers supposed to do about required employment posters when their workforce is remote, hybrid, or scattered across multiple states?
Why Employment Posters Exist (and Why They Still Matter)
At the federal and state levels, employment posters are meant to inform employees of their rights: minimum wage, overtime, family and medical leave, anti-discrimination protections, workplace safety, and how to complain if something goes wrong.
Courts and agencies take these obligations seriously. Failure to post can:
- Extend statutes of limitation,
- Support employee claims of lack of notice,
- Trigger civil penalties, and
- Provide plaintiffs’ lawyers with a festive footnote in a complaint.
In other words, posters are boring, but noncompliance is exciting in all the wrong ways.
Federal Posters: The Non-Negotiables
Most private employers are subject to a baseline set of federal posting requirements, including (depending on size and industry):
- Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage & overtime)
- Family and Medical Leave Act
- EEOC “Equal Employment Opportunity Is the Law”
- OSHA Job Safety and Health
- Employee Polygraph Protection Act
- USERRA (military leave rights)
- E-Verify and Right to Work (if applicable)
Traditionally, these must be posted “in a conspicuous place where employees can readily see them.” The phrase was written with physical workplaces in mind, but the Department of Labor and EEOC have acknowledged that electronic posting can satisfy the requirement if certain conditions are met.
Remote Workers and Electronic Posting: Allowed, With Strings Attached
Electronic posting is generally acceptable if:
- Employees customarily receive work-related information electronically, and
- The posters are as accessible as a physical posting would be.
That means:
- Not buried six clicks deep on an intranet no one uses,
- Not behind a password that employees don’t have,
- Not emailed once during onboarding and never seen again.
In the real world, best practice is to maintain a clearly labeled “Employment Law Notices” or “Required Posters” page that is:
- Continuously available,
- Easy to find,
- Updated regularly, and
- Communicated to employees
If you don’t have an intranet or shared drive, your payroll or HR platform can often do the heavy lifting. Many common systems (such as ADP, Paychex, Gusto, Paylocity, or similar providers) include a section for required employment law posters. This approach generally works because employees already log in regularly to view pay stubs, tax forms, or benefits information. To be effective, employees must have individual login access, the posters must be continuously available (not just during onboarding), and employees must be told where to find them within the system. Used correctly, a payroll or HR platform can satisfy posting requirements without adding new technology or administrative burden.
For hybrid workplaces, the safest approach is both physical and electronic posting. Redundancy is your friend in this case.
Multi-State Employees: Location, Location, Location
Here’s where things get spicy. Posting obligations are generally based on where the employee works, not where the company is headquartered. If you have employees working remotely (or physically) in multiple states, you likely need to comply with each state’s posting requirements, plus federal.
This is where many small and midsize employers stumble. State posters vary widely and may include:
- State minimum wage and overtime laws,
- Paid leave notices,
- Workers’ compensation information,
- Unemployment insurance notices,
- State anti-discrimination laws.
Some states update posters annually, and some impose penalties for failure to post, even if no employee is harmed. Multi-state remote work turns “just put up the posters” into an ongoing compliance project.
Common Mistakes We See (So You Can Avoid Them)
- Only posting federal notices and ignoring state-specific requirements.
- Assuming one state’s posters cover everyone.
- Failing to update posters when laws change
- Relying on onboarding emails alone. Posting must be continuous.
- Not documenting compliance. If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen.
Practical Compliance Tips
- Do a census of where your employees actually work, and make sure your handbook requires that they notify you of any changes.
- Maintain a poster matrix by state.
- Use a reputable poster service, but don’t blindly rely on it.
- Assign responsibility internally for updates.
- Review postings annually (or whenever you expand into a new state).
- When in doubt, over-post. No employee has ever sued because they were too informed.
Final Thought
Employment law posters are not glamorous. But in a remote and multi-state world, they are a quiet compliance cornerstone, and one that regulators expect you to have figured out. Think of posters like insurance: mildly annoying until the moment you really wish you had paid attention.
If your workforce has changed faster than your compliance strategy, now is a good time to catch up, before a government agency or a plaintiffs’ lawyer helpfully brings it to your attention. If you need assistance in this regard, don’t hesitate to give us a call!