Employment Law Poster Series: You need employment law posters—where should you get them?
I’ve had many clients ask me lately for my thoughts on employment law poster vendors—what they can and can’t do, what they cost, which ones I recommend, etc.
Frankly, because I spent from 2010 to 2021 working for a company that sold employment law posters, these are questions I hadn’t really pondered much till recently. But now that I’m no longer working for that company (😄 👏🏼) and am on my own (and not selling posters), I thought this would be a good time for me to gather intelligence on this topic from my network of HR excellence.
So I asked on LinkedIn: “Do you use (or have you used) an employment law poster vendor? If so, will you be so kind as to share some thoughts about your experience?” And my HR community came through with lots of responses and recommendations.
The most common recommendation was, by far, J.J. Keller. Fun fact: I didn’t realize that SHRM and J.J. Keller were partners in the employment law poster business till I started writing this: https://store.shrm.org/books-resources/labor-law-posters?_ga=2.33327230.1126489261.1646671877-262930721.1646438522 For what it’s worth, out of at least 10 comments I got about J.J. Keller, all of them were positive
Other recommendations I got were for HR Direct/Poster Guard (https://www.hrdirect.com/labor-law-poster-service) and Labor Law Center (https://www.laborlawcenter.com) Again, I didn’t get any negative comments about these companies.
I don’t have personal experience with any of these vendors so I’m not vouching for any of them.
Some of my LinkedIn people responded, correctly, that for anyone who wants to put in the work, all required posters are available from the governmental source (federal, state, or local) that requires them.
Indeed, for anyone wanting to go this route, the U.S. Department of Labor has done us a big favor with a few pretty awesome webpages:
Workplace Posters: https://www.dol.gov/general/topics/posters
State Labor Offices:https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/contacts
e-Laws Advisors, Posters and Recordkeeping:https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/posters.html
But, while it may be true that you can get all required posters without spending any actual money, I have yet to meet an HR person who wants to spend the time it would require to find them, print them, update them, etc.--especially as more and more companies find themselves with employees in multiple states.
Which is why it’s no wonder poster vendors are so popular.