Labor Compliance
Labor Compliance Overview
Labor compliance represents one of the most difficult challenges for hospitality operators managing an hourly workforce. Compliance in the workplace never boils down to one single law. Labor compliance represents a blend of regulations covering everything from predictable scheduling to anti-discriminatory practices.
Labor compliance related to scheduling and breaks
- Fair Workweek
- Predictive scheduling
- Break wavers and right to rest periods
Anti-discriminatory labor compliance
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- At-will employment
- Just cause and progressive discipline
- Minor and Selected State Child Labor laws
Labor compliance related to wages and workplace conditions
- Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
- $15/hr minimum wage
- Tip credit and tip pooling
- 80/20 rule
Why is Labor Compliance Important in Hospitality?
We all know that violating labor laws can quickly add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and employee payouts. But can labor compliance for restaurants, hotels, and hospitality bring proactive business benefits? The answer is with an all-in-one HCM solution.
Although restaurant operators may see labor compliance as a hassle, labor laws were built to create a better employee experience. As such, restaurants, hotels, and hospitality businesses that are fully labor compliant tend to see high-performing team members, lower turnover rates, and higher guest satisfaction.
All-in-One HCM Platform
for Labor Compliance in Hospitality
Compliance-driven
Intelligent Scheduling
In an industry as unpredictable as hospitality, schedules are never set in stone. When last-minute schedule changes do need to be made (and they will), maintaining labor compliance can prove challenging.
Harri’s intelligent scheduling automatically adjusts on-the-fly to quickly create schedules compliant with local and federal labor laws. Data-driven schedules utilize historic sales data to help you create labor-efficient schedules based on customer demand while still remaining fully labor compliant.
Templated schedules, automated employee-driven shift swaps, and Hot Fill auto-scheduling ensure labor compliance without the headache for restaurants, hotels, and hospitality businesses.
Real-time Alerts on
Non-compliant Actions
When managing a team of 500 employees across 7 locations, a store manager is bound to make an error here or there. When that happens, Harri sends automatic non-compliance alerts so corrective action can be taken before legal penalties occur.
Advanced schedules deadlines, employee shift change requests, and more are immediately flagged to your team to ensure appropriate action within the necessary timeframe. Instant alerts relate to employee actions or store location requirements ensure full labor compliance.
Powerful Analytics and
Fully Digital Records
Harri connects the dots between every HCM process and provides a suite of real-time, fully customized data analytics. Understand the correlation between overtime and store sales to see where it’s possible to scale back operations. See how often premium payments are paid for Fair Workweek violations and which employees they’re associated with. We paint a complete picture so you can better identify gaps and streamline operations.
If your restaurant, hotel, or hospitality business ever breaks labor compliance, you’re required to provide proof of operations whether you’re proving yourself innocent or guilty. Harri stores a permanent digital record for all labor compliance actions, such as employee schedules, hours worked, shift swaps, premium payments, and more.
Employee Compliance simplified
We streamline the onboarding process so your new employees can start training as soon as possible on day one.
Harri’s digital onboarding means every legal form can be accessed, filled out, and submitted from any device, including mobile phones. We provide all documents in English and Spanish to accommodate your diverse hospitality workforce.
Employment policies, training documents, and other legal paperwork are provided to new hires from the get-go to ensure no paperwork gets lost in the shuffle of onboarding. We also partner with various training partners so your team can complete COVID-19 sanitation and harassment training right from the Harri platform.
Seamlessly Onboard
a New Employee
When the employee experience suffers, so does the guest experience. During the onboarding process, it’s essential that labor paperwork is filled out correctly the first time around. One empty field or misspelled name could result in serious legal fees for your hospitality business.
Harri’s digital onboarding platform eliminates the possibility of paperwork error by automatically carrying over vital information from one form to the next, on every page. We don’t permit you to submit legal paperwork until all fields are filled in, and both managers and employees will be alerted when they forget to fill out a section.
Labor Compliance
for Restaurants, Hotels, and Hospitality
NYC
NYC labor laws often favor employees over restaurant, hotel, and hospitality businesses, making labor compliance no easy task for the hospitality industry.
As a city that has always tipped the scales in favor of employees, NYC labor compliance will continue to prove challenging for restaurants, hotels, and hospitality without an all-in-one HCM tech solution in place
NYC hospitality must navigate the below intertwining labor compliance regulations:
- NYC-specific Fair Workweek scheduling laws
- $15/hr minimum wage
- The 80/20 rule
- Employee right to rest
- Removal of at-will employment
- The potential removal of tip credit and tip pooling
California
California’s many pro-employee labor laws makes it known as one of the most difficult states to operate a restaurant, hotel, or hospitality business.
Service-driven industries are extremely unpredictable, and California business operators will find it difficult to stay compliant with the many moving labor regulations without the assistance of HCM tech.
Below is a brief list of California labor compliance requirements:
- State-wide minimum wage increase to $14/hr
- State-wide Fair Scheduling Act
- Fair Workweek for San Francisco and Emeryville
- Right to rest exemptions
- Overtime related to shift hours AND days worked
- Employee-driven beak wavers
- Annual pay data and hours worked report
- Required anti-harassment training for all employees
- CAL/OSHA COVID safety regulations, including benefits and reporting
- New family leave policies
Seatle
Seattle has many laws in place to assist service-level employees, and the Seattle Secure Scheduling Ordinance mirrors many labor compliance requirements of Fair Workweek.
Predictive scheduling laws in Seattle are expected to expand, which means hospitality businesses will need integrated compliance solutions to navigate complex labor laws.
Seattle businesses must follow the below labor compliance requirements:
- Paid Sick & Safe Time: Sick time reporting requirements
- Seattle Wage Theft Ordinance
- Overtime laws
- Break wavers and shift-based meal breaks
- 10-minute rest breaks
- 14-day advanced scheduling notice
- Right to rest: At least 10 hours in-between shifts
- Good faith estimate of shift hours
- Offer additional hours to existing employees before hiring new talent
- Predictability pay to employees affected by last-minute schedule changes
- Advanced recordkeeping on wages, sick time, premium payments
- $16.69/hr minimum wage for businesses with 500 or more locations OR untipped workers
- $15/hr minimum wage for businesses with 500 or fewer locations OR tipped workers