California employers are required by law to post and disperse several workplace notices that provide employees with information about a myriad of employment-related topics — including harassment protections, paid sick leave, minimum wage and workplace safety, to name a few. Display required posters in a central location where all employees can easily read them, such as a break room, common hallway, payroll office or other common location. You must also display the posters in every company location.
Posters must be filled out and list emergency information, hourly rates, worker compensation insurance information, leaves of absences. A best practice is to buy posters from a California based Human resources company such as the California Chamber of Commerce
Noncompliance Results in Severe Penalties
Many posting guidelines contain penalties for failure to post or distribute the required notices — penalties that can be severe.
This year, for instance, Cal/OSHA increase its penalties for nonserious violations of its rules, including violations of posting and recordkeeping requirements. Violators now may be assessed up to $12,471 per violation (versus the previous $7,000 cap).
In other words, if you fail to post the required Cal/OSHA notice “Safety and Health Protection on the Job” in a conspicuous location frequented by employees, you could face a $12,471 penalty (Labor Code sec. 6431).
And because the Cal/OSHA poster has mandatory updates, displaying anything but the most current poster could result in this increased penalty. So make sure you display the most up-to-date poster for 2019.
