Mandatory vs Non-Mandatory Updates and Poster Revisions

When keeping up to date with labor law posters, sometimes you’ll see an update marked as mandatory and other times, non-mandatory. Going beyond the obvious, what exactly do they mean?

Mandatory Updates

A mandatory update is a change in legislation (state, government or city level) that makes whatever notice outdated and thus out of compliance. The government agency that releases the new notice will specify whether it’s mandatory and all employers must replace their labor law posters with the new one, as old versions of the poster will be out of compliance.

Non-mandatory Updates

A non-mandatory update is a small update to the poster, a cosmetic change, wherein the government agency says the old version and new version are both compliant. These small updates don’t affect the intent of of the law described on the notice. Typical things like addresses or name changes, or format or layouts changes usually fall into this category.

How Often Do Updates Occur?

There’s no set schedule and it depends on the legislation passed, but there can be updates in the hundreds each year. Because the government doesn’t personally alert businesses, business owners need to stay on top of this. It’s tough to keep up with them but we offer a compliance subscription service that that automatically sends you a new and completely updated federal or state labor law poster whenever an update occurs.

If you want to avoid the leg work of staying up-to-date, sign up for our labor law poster subscription service and we’ll automatically send new posters when laws change, keeping you compliant 365 days a year. We continually monitor local, state and federal posting requirements and have been helping thousands of businesses maintain compliance since 1999.