HR compliance is a critical element of any organization. On a practical level, it protects the business from legal action taken by the government or by the workers, including brand damage, fines, and penalties. Ensuring you’re on top of HR compliance also enhances your company’s reputation as an ethical and safe workplace that is looking out for their people.
Learn more in our detailed guide to talent solution.
Looking to automate compliance as part of your organizational workflow?
In the meantime, here’s your guide to HR compliance success!
This is part of a series of articles about Talent Management.
Key Areas of HR Compliance
Start by identifying what your HR compliance requirements are, and pinpointing any gaps. There are six main areas to consider.
- Employment laws: In the US, the Fair Labor Standards Act is the North Star for employment laws. It lays out standards for elements such as how much workers should be paid and how many hours they can work. Remember that these laws can differ between States, so it’s important to research at both a federal, state and regional level.
- Compensation and benefits: Look to bodies such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Family and Medical Leave Act as a baseline for benefits such as health insurance and parental leave. If your business hires more than 50 FTE (not the same as 50 workers), you’ll need to provide an affordable health insurance option, for example.
- Equal opportunity and discrimination: This area of HR compliance is also about how you hire workers, even before they arrive on payroll. Job descriptions must not be discriminatory, and even interview questions can’t pry into a candidate’s protected characteristics. Moving forward, unfair pay practices could lead to a gender or race pay gap, which may not be intentional, but can emerge over time.
- Workplace safety: HR compliance is not just about hiring and benefits. Make sure to think about workplace safety, especially if your workers are working from home in a hybrid or remote setting. You may still be liable for the safety of workers, such as providing an adequate WFH desk and chair. In the office, safety could be anything from smoke detectors to physical guards, depending on the industry.
- Immigration and work authorization: Within the US, HR compliance is complex enough, let alone once you consider hiring abroad. And yet today, the remote working landscape opens doors to hire from anywhere. If you want to hire abroad, you’ll need to consider work VISAs and permits for employees, or make sure you have a compliant freelancer relationship.
- Data and privacy: Today’s digital systems are both interconnected and complex, and a single mistake could cause a widespread cyber incident. HR compliance includes having smart onboarding and offboarding processes in place to ensure system access and data privacy is without gaps. Make sure to implement a no-blame policy for if workers fall victim to a scam, or accidently share data so that you can act quickly in case of a breach.
Challenges in HR Compliance
One of the biggest challenges for HR compliance is that regulations change all the time. It seems like every month there are new rules and laws being put in place for everything from fair wages to freelancer misclassification. It can feel like a full-time job just knowing what you’re meant to be compliant with!
This is exacerbated when you consider being consistent with HR compliance across multiple locations, especially when you look for workers out of State, or even abroad. What’s totally normal in one region is unheard of in another, for example 13-month pay which is standard in countries such as Portugal, Greece, and Spain, or lunch vouchers in Luxembourg.
There are also certain parts of employment law which can be considered gray areas. Freelancer misclassification is a good example. In some cases, whether a freelancer should really be an employee is a matter of opinion, as to whether the employer has ultimate control over their workload for example, or whether the work that they are completing is part of the core business of the company. There is sometimes no definitive answer here, so it can take time to look at local laws, use various tests such as the ABC or Borello test for misclassification, and even get in touch with the IRS for a final decision.
Technology like Fiverr Enterprise can Streamline and Support HR Compliance
Many companies use legacy HR Information Systems (HRIS) to manage compliance regulations, but this involves a lot of manual effort, and doesn’t add any intelligence to the process.
In contrast, Fiverr Enterprise can automate compliance checks so that all workers are classified correctly from day one, with continual compliance validation in an ongoing way. If workers are not compliant – they aren’t working for you any more.
Fiverr Enterprise is also great for digital record keeping and data security. All of the legal and tax compliance processes are automated and customized to your specific business needs, relieving the heavy paperwork burden from your teams. Anything from tax forms and background checks, to compliance documentation and NDAs, all taken care of.
Once collected, we’ll automatically monitor each relationship, including all legal documentation. If any risk arises, we monitor your business automatically so you can take the right action.
This means you don’t need to worry about HR compliance for data privacy and security, as from onboarding to offboarding, everything is checked and automated to provide ultimate peace of mind.
If HR compliance has been on your mind, and you want to reduce risk by tightening up the compliance processes in your own organization, the first step to an automated, customized compliance workflow is a 30-min call with one of our workforce experts.
Related content: Read our guide to hr compliance.
Related content: Read our guide to talent management practices