by Erin M. Reid-Eriksen, Littler
Managing compliance across multiple states presents ongoing challenges for HR professionals, particularly as employment laws continue to evolve at the state and local level. This comprehensive guide is designed to help multistate employers, HR leaders, and compliance professionals understand and manage their obligations under a wide range of state employment laws throughout the employee lifecycle.
The guide provides practical guidance on key compliance areas, including hiring and onboarding, employee handbooks, workplace notices and postings, discrimination and harassment prevention, wages and hours, employee privacy, workplace health and safety, leaves of absence, health care benefits, and post‑employment obligations. It addresses critical topics such as background checks, pay equity, accommodations, leave laws, termination practices, WARN and COBRA requirements, and the enforceability of post‑employment restrictions like noncompete and nondisclosure agreements.
Designed to support both centralised and decentralised HR models, this resource helps employers identify common state‑level compliance themes, manage risk, and align policies and practices across jurisdictions. Whether you are setting company‑wide standards, responding to state‑specific requirements, or planning HR strategy, this guide serves as a practical reference for navigating multistate employment law compliance and preparing for future legal developments.
In this guide, learn about:
- State developments and themes
- Hiring and onboarding
- Employment applications
- Background checks
- Preemployment inquiries
- Preemployment testing
- Immigration compliance
- New hire reporting requirements
- Post-employment restrictions
- Noncompete agreements
- Nonsolicitation agreements
- Enforceability of post-employment restrictions
- Nondisclosure agreements
- Assignment of invention agreements
- Employee handbooks and work rulesEmployee notices and postings
- Wage notices
- EEO, discrimination, harassment and retaliation
- Sexual harassment prevention training
- Pay equity
- Reasonable accommodations
- LGBT rights and state religious freedom laws
- Employment protections for interns
- Employment protections for the homeless
- Whistleblowing
- Employee training and development
- Wages and hours
- Minimum wage
- Overtime
- Payroll
- Independent contractor status
- Meal and rest breaks
- Breastfeeding breaks
- Employee privacy
- Employee surveillance
- Social media
- Background and credit checks
- Drug testing
- State labor laws
- Workplace health and safety
- Leave of absence policies and practices
- State family and medical leave laws
- Other state leave laws
- Health care benefits policies
- Same-sex marriage
- Post-employment relationship
- Payment of wages
- Communicating termination decision
- Personnel file access
- Document retention
- WARN notification
- COBRA
- Centralized or decentralized HR
- Future developments
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About the author
Littler
Littler, the largest global employment and labor law practice, exclusively represents the global employer community in all aspects of employment and labor law. Littler litigates, mediates and negotiates some of the most influential employment law cases and labor contracts on record.
Littler’s practice areas are extensive and their expertise crosses over multiple industries and spans a wide array of employment law areas such as discrimination and harassment, labor management relations, executive compensation, ERISA and benefit plan litigation, leaves of absence and disability accommodation, hiring, performance management and termination, employment practices audits and wage and hour.
Littler is the exclusive author of Brightmine’s prestigious Employee Handbook. Their experience with preparing employee handbooks and their ongoing contributions to Brightmine in the areas of federal and state leaves of absence, disabilities and multistate employer issues made them a natural fit to partner with us on the creation of a robust set of model handbook policy statements and guidance for federal, state and key municipalities.