Effective August 1, 2016, all employers of every size workforce must comply with two new mandatory federal poster changes.  The US Department of Labor (DOL) has updated its Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) poster and the Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) poster.

The changes to the FLSA poster include removing civil penalty amounts, the addition of the rights of nursing mothers, and a deletion of text under the Child Labor section. Except for a few very narrowly exempted employers, whether you have two employees or two hundred employees, you need to put up this new poster.

The changes to the EPPA poster include a removal of a civil penalty limit, a change in their toll-free phone number, and an additional TTY phone number. All employers, regardless of the number of employees and regardless of whether you would ever consider giving your employees a polygraph, must display this poster in the workplace.

The mandatory notices must be posted immediately. As with all of your employment posters, these two new ones should be displayed in a prominent and conspicuous place in each of your establishments wherever notices can be readily seen by employees and applicants. A spot right next to your time clock or in your employee entrance area is ideal. Just make sure wherever you place your posters is a place that all of your employees regularly enter.

If you need help knowing which posters besides these two you need to have displayed in your workforce, you can find the lists of required federal posters here and Texas posters here. All of the required posters are available online for free. You don’t need to pay a commercial service for a combined poster that isn’t customized to the specifics of your workplace.

Don’t ignore your federal and state posting requirements. The penalties have risen recently. For example, if you have 15 or more employees, the failure to put up the required EEO poster was raised to $210 in 2014 for each of your locations and is now indexed to the Consumer Price Index to increase with inflation. Considering you have as many as twelve posters required in your workplace, you don’t want to be fined for something so easily remedied.