Name: jeff kuzmich - jeff kuzmich - Migrate_CA_Decoding_EE_Rights_01232026_5178304
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T05:52:41.722Z
Duration: 24 min 36 s
Description: jeff kuzmich - jeff kuzmich - Migrate_CA_Decoding_EE_Rights_01232026_5178304

Transcript for "jeff kuzmich - jeff kuzmich - Migrate_CA_Decoding_EE_Rights_01232026_5178304": Hey everybody, it's Gene Marks and welcome to another. This is actually part three in our series of webinars that we're doing on being compliant if you're running a business in California. By way of introduction, am a certified public accountant and a business owner, Although in Pennsylvania, on the other side of the country, I also write for a number of well known platforms every week, like the Guardian and the Hill and Forbes that cover business and small business. And I'm the host of the Paychecks Thrive podcast, which I hope that you are regularly attending and watching us on YouTube or listening to on your favorite podcast application. Okay. Are on our third session, which is, decoding employee rights and personnel files in the state of California. Now before we get into that, just a few tech tips for you all. Please note your primary auto connection is through the computer. It is not your phone. If you can't hear me very well, it's probably because your speaker volume is toned down. So you might want to bump it up a little bit if you want to hear better. If you want to refresh your session at any time, if you're on a Windows PC, hit the F5 key and if you're on a Mac, the command R key. Some other tech tips for this webinar, you can download and print a copy of today's deck for any future reference and any other resource in the files or resources window is here. If you've got questions, please submit them in the questions window. We will take all questions that come in and we promise you we will respond to them as well. They're very important not only to get you answers but for us to know what issues are important for you. There's our legal disclaimer. We are required to show this, so please take a look through and just let you know this does not constitute legal advice which Alex or Mainpresenter here I'm sure is relieved to hear. If you have any questions or things that are particular to your business, obviously consult your attorney or advisors. Alex Pappasys is our expert with us today. He is with Paychex. He's the HR risk and response partner at Paychex. Alex is a seasoned HR professional with over ten years of experience in employee relations, people management, and HR compliance. He's currently based in San Antonio, Texas. He's SHRM certified at the Society of Human Resources Management. He leverages his extensive expertise to assist California clients across all industries with high risk employee relations situations and compliance issues. Before joining Paychex four years ago, Alex worked across the country in various states where he supported retail companies with new store openings and employee relationship challenges. His diverse background has equipped him with a comprehensive understanding of complex workplace dynamics and state specific employment laws. Alex, I read that because I wanted to make sure I got that all right because it really is important. So before I do bring Alex on, I just want to make sure we're all got this right. This is a three part series you're looking at. We've already covered pay transparency on a separate webinar. We've talked about navigating salary, minimum wage, and overtime. This session we are going to be focusing on decoding employee rights and personnel files. So let me pass it on to Alex who's going to go through today's agenda and let's get into some of details and content that you need to know. Alex, why don't you take it away? Awesome. Thanks, Jean, and thanks everybody for making it to part three of this series. Super happy to be here. Let's go ahead and jump right into it. Today's agenda is going to be first and foremost, discussing that Workplace Know Your Rights Act that's passed in California. It's been in the news a ton. So really happy to be able to touch base with all of you on that. We're gonna talk about some updates for 2026 to, personnel file requirements for all of our employees. And then as always, as I say, our favorite part, how can paychecks and Paycor help you as a business be compliant with all of this? So let's go ahead and jump right into it. First up the workplace know your rights act. If you've been following the news at all, you know, the last year, lot of activity regards, law enforcement raids into workplace, employees sometimes being detained, whatever it may be. All of that's been in the news. Well, California passed a new piece of legislation that's effective now into 2026 called the Workplace Know Your Rights Act. And the goal of this is to inform all employees about the rights they have in the workplace in regards to labor relations, immigration enforcement, and discrimination. So let's go ahead and jump into what you have to do in order to be compliant with this new act. I'll tell you, this new law is very unique. There's not really anything like it in the country right now. And there's certain, additional steps you have to make sure you're meeting and deadlines you have to meet to be compliant. And you see those listed on the screen. We'll go ahead and we'll jump into those. So let's go. The first and foremost, number one thing, by February 1 in 2026, all employees must be provided a state mandated workplace Know Your Rights Act notice or document. This has to be given to every single existing employee prior to February 1, And then it has to be given to every single employee every single year thereafter. So, you know, you want to mark your calendar off, say January of every single year is when you would provide the updated workplace know your rights notice to every single employee. So you're gonna have that done by February 1 this year. Come the same time next year, you'll give it to all employees again. It's also really important to make sure this notice is provided to every new hire that you have as well. So, you know, sure you have existing employees you're gonna give it to every single year. But if you hire an employee in July, make sure this notice is now included in all your new hire packets or your onboarding packets that you have as a company. It's a requirement under California law. So a lot of talk about the notice and I'm sure you're wondering where can I find the notice? What is this notice? What's going on with that? We'll make sure in the resources tabs to provide you with the link or the PDF for that notice so you have it on file. If for some reason you lose that or you don't have it, the, department of industrial relations for California has it posted directly on their website. So if you were to go onto Google and you just search, you know, California workplace know your rights notice, it's gonna be the first link that pops up on that government site. The notice is about five pages in length. It's very detailed, very in-depth. It has information, as I mentioned, about all those different types of laws or rights employees have. But then very important as well, that last page, it has phone numbers for every single state agency that is involved to support employees on these things. So make sure you take the time as a employer, review the notice yourself and make sure that is provided out to employees by February 1. Very important. If I can assist you on a question, in Pennsylvania, where I'm at, we have something similar, although it's not as stringent as California's. Most of my clients, they just post this like in the employee break room or something like this on a bullet. Really it's five pages, so I could see people just throwing it up on a bulletin board somewhere for people to see. Is that good enough or does this have to be specifically given to the employees? And if it does have to be specifically given to employees, do do we need confirmation, sign off, you know, that they that they received it at least? Yeah. Great great question. I was actually about to to jump into that, so I'm perfect timing here. What you're referring to as far as, posting on the wall, yes. So, like, on on a federal basis and in pretty much every single state, they have required labor posters or notices that must be provided to employees, and you could post to me on the break room or something. This is totally different than that. This is an additional separate notice that's to be given to the employees individually. And it has to be given to employees in a couple of different ways. So either you're going to print off this notice, and depending on how many employees you have, you know, that could be a lot of printing. You have to do five pages a pop for each copy, and you're going give it to them physically individually. So that's one way you could do it. An additional way you can do it is you can email it to every single employee electronically. Or an additional way we can do, and we can talk about it later on is you can use an employee portal. If you have your employees in the system, upload the notice and then push it out as a notification to all of your employees. So the state luckily has, provided some leniency and the different methods you can use to give it to employees. The rule of thumb that they're going to follow though, is if you're going to provide it to an employee, do it in a method where you can guarantee it's given to the employee within one business day of you sending it out. So, you know, an email is going be instantaneous, but you want to make sure you're doing it properly and in a quick fashion. And again, before February 1, so we're only a couple of weeks away. Great. Yeah, absolutely. So the next component of the workplace law that has been passed here, as you see on the screen, there's some mention about emergency contacts on here. And this is the second component of the law that is going to require additional action from you as an employer. So as you see the date, 03/30/2026. So the additional step that you have to make sure is every single employee in your company should be met with or at least informed to provide updated emergency contact info. And you as an employer have to have that saved in your system or on their personnel file. That has to be updated by March 30. An additional component and why this is so unique is the law also mandates that you as an employer have to now ask the employee in the event you're arrested or detained at the workplace or outside of the workplace where you're conducting work, do you want us, if that situation happens, to contact your emergency contact for you? You know, we see these immigration raids where someone is detained or something happens. So in an event like that, what would happen going forward is the employer would know which employee is arrested or detained. They'd look at their file and they would have to notate, okay, they want me to contact their emergency contact if that were to happen. So that's another piece that is added to this law. It's another action item you as a company or an employer have to make sure you follow in meeting that deadline of March 30. So, you know, as you can tell, I'm really emphasizing the deadlines on these dates, and it's always important that we do that. But the reason I'm doing this is the state's really not playing around when it comes in terms of compliance for this and the fines that you can be assessed. So the the fines we see happen that are written into the law that was passed is employers can be fined $500 per employee for each individual violation of this law. So you can have a situation where if you have, you know, 50 employees and, oh, shoot, I didn't, I don't, provide them with this notice and you get audited or something happens or something's filed against you. And that information comes out 50 employees times up to $500 for every single violation. That's a big problem. And then the state lists even then you can be fined upwards of $10,000 in fines for each individual employee. And the reason I say that is because some of these laws and the components, the state will begin to impose a fee for every single day of noncompliance that you have past that deadline. So I'm not trying to scare you, but I guess I am trying to scare you a little bit. You got to make sure you stay in compliance here because there's a lot of fines that can be assessed. All right. So that's workplace Know Your Rights Act. That's what we have going on there. Let's jump into the next component of this, which is gonna be about maintaining accurate personnel files for you as a company. State of California is, honestly pretty unique when it comes to personnel files and the loss they have on file, or on the books rather. California requires, obviously, employers have to maintain accurate personnel files, but this isn't just keeping, you know, payroll records or time sheets. You have to have all the employees performance reviews on there. If you ever put the employee on a performance improvement plan or a PIP, we call it, that should be included. Attendance records. If the employee has filed any grievances against you as a company, those should be documented in the file. So there's a lot of things that the state currently mandates must be an employee file. So it's important to make sure you have that squared away. On top of that, state of California allows current and former employees to request a copy of everything that's in their personnel file. And you as the employer have to comply with that request. So if an employee says, you know what? I'm requesting my personnel file and everything you have in it, You have thirty days as an employer to respond to that request and provide all those documents I just listed off to you. So there's a lot of things going on here, that you have to make sure you're aware of. So that's where we're currently at and what you have to worry about. Going into 2026 now, California is now adding an additional layer on top of all those requirements. So now what you have to include also in those personnel files, anytime you do, employee trainings or they're completing, educational certificate or some sort of certification, now all of those documents have to be added to the employee personnel file as well. And that training record has to show the employee completed it, what the date of completion was, who provided the training and what was, covered in the training. There's a lot of, you know, additional things that we're adding here. You have to make sure you're dialed in and adding that to the personnel file. I was going to ask you about something. I'm just wondering, this is the law we have to comply. I know there are a lot of people that are watching this that are going to grumble when they see some of this stuff, because it's just more compliance they have to do. As somebody who's been in this field for a long time, I'm just curious, like, can you just get a little context as to why this state would would be asking, like, for now for, like, education and training records? Like, you know, why and maybe this is more your opinion than not, but it would help, I think, our our audience just at least have a basis for why they're being asked to do this. Sure. I mean, there's a couple of different reasons we could point to. I can even tie it back into some of these other mini webinars that we've covered during this three part series. Think about pay transparency for one. If the state's going to audit you, do you have accurate records to show, you know, okay, what certifications or education does this employee have compared to the other employees in the same position? And are they paid equally or not? So that's something that we know right off the bat we can see. An additional thing, you know, California requires, sexual harassment training and workplace discrimination training on a regular basis. So if you're going to get audited for that, are you going be able to show you've provided that training in accordance with the law and that's kept in their files? So there's a variety And different you know what, when I hear your response and I just want to say for those of you that are watching this right now as employers, a lot of this stuff is also designed I think to also protect the employer as well. You are paying somebody less than somebody else at a position you're really good at keeping education records and training records in compliance, you can prove to say like, listen, that person deserves a higher salary because clearly by our records, this person doesn't have that certification or training. And you just mentioned that this harassment or discrimination or any of those kinds of things, these are all documentation I think an employer needs if, God forbid, ever, they get into trouble with an employee or there's performance evaluations. So you've answered that question perfectly. This is not just like an employee protection thing. Truly believe this kind of stuff is a two way street. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Something we see all the time, as I mentioned, you know, a little bit earlier of the things that are required to be in the file, one of them is what grievances the employee filed against you. And you can even have, like, workplace investigation notes or records documented in that employee personnel file. We see all the time an employee winds up leaving the company or gets terminated for a specific reason. They come back and try to file a lawsuit saying, oh, I was only fired because I said so and so harassed me, or I said this. Well, the employer can go into those records and show, no, we did an investigation. Here are our findings. It's in the personnel file. And they can refute those claims rather easily. If you don't have those things dialed in, then you get into a he said, she said situation. You have attorneys involved, you have fees with that. It can be very costly. So that's why, as you mentioned, this is to protect the employer as much as it is the employee. And when we talk about things being costly, the violations for this, you can have a $750 fine assessed to you by the state for every single violation you have of this law in regards to personnel files, plus the recovery of attorney's fees from that employee. So if an employee sues you or files a claim against you, they have an attorney involved, not only is the state fining you individually $7.50, but you're also gonna have to pay out whatever that employee's now getting charged by their attorney. So it's a it's a lot going on there. All right. So jumping ahead, as I always say, what can we do to help and support you here, to be compliant? First and foremost, we have some fantastic software, both Paychex and Paycor that help you keep all of this in line. And what I mean by that is I mentioned earlier, okay, the workplace know your rights act. How can I share that with all of my employees in an easy method? Well, our software allows you to upload or create documents and then push them out electronically to every single employee in your company with a couple clicks of your mouse. And it's in their inbox. They can review it. And then that file is now saved on their personnel file. So it's really easy to do things with the softwares that we have. So I always emphasize with that, with all of our clients that we work with, use the softwares that we have to help you be compliant here. It will support you big time. In addition to that, what we see a lot of clients can have employee personnel files all uploaded electronically into the system, and then they can put security measures or accesses on those files. So if only HR wants to view them, they can do it, but they can all do it in a single safe and secure database that they have access to. And then the final thing I'll wrap up with here is, you know, Paychex and Paycor, we have our own electronic training platforms. So you can enroll employees in the harassment training. They complete it through our portal. When they complete it, they get a certificate that says it's completed the date and time it was completed their name. Right then and there, that's when you need to be compliant with the law. You add it to their file. So it's a lot of different things that we have and components we have in the software to support you. So those are all the ways that we can help. As always touch base with your HR business partner for further information and I'll go ahead and pass it back to Gene to finish it out. Thank you very much Alex. That was great. First of all guys, you can see on your screen there is a poll question that's going to be popping up that will give you the opportunity to please answer so we can find out if you would like some help. I think if there's anything else that I've gotten off of this three part series that we have done is that if you're running a business in California you definitely need some outside help because there is a lot of stuff that you need to know. And before I let you go, for those of you who have been for all three parts of this webinar series, Alex, I'm going to throw this back out to you and put you on the spot. For each of these three webinars that we did, Give me one big takeaway for each. What is your biggest takeaway from the uncovering paid transparency webinar first? Great question. Definitely put me on the spot, but I think, for the uncovering paid transparency part, I would tell, all of our clients and I emphasized it in that webinar as well. Yes, it's an additional thing you have to be compliant with, but if you do the pay transparency the right way and do a full assessment of what you're paying employees and why, and comparing with the market, it's going to pay off for you long term. Those employees will stay with you longer. They'll have more trust in you, and you'll be able to beat out your competitors if you're paying accurately and you have access to all the data that we can provide you. So that's the major takeaway I have from the pay transparency one. Could not agree with you more. Okay. How about salary now? For those of you that came or for those of you that did not see our second webinar, Alex talked about minimum wage increases in California and overtime pay as well. Just wrapping those two issues up. Do you have a big takeaway about this too? Yeah, absolutely. The biggest one for that. And if you watch that webinar, you'll see, I emphasize it the most throughout is, you know, knowing what the hourly minimum wage rate year to year is a pretty easy task. You can Google that and find it. We, as HR partners here can support you with that. The big takeaway from that webinar is whatever you think, you know, about designating your employees as exempt from overtime. Think again, and do a double check on it, conduct an audit with us to help you because many times you're maybe improperly classifying someone as exempt from overtime and it can come back to bite you in the long run with a lot of different types of back pay or attorney's fees involved. So reach out to us, have us do an analysis for you on if your positions are exempt or not. That's the biggest takeaway on that one. Beautiful. And for this one, where we just finished talking about our employee rights and personnel files and whatnot. You know what, I'll rescue on this one. Here's my takeaway. What you taught me is that letting employees know what all their rights are and also maintaining now updated personnel files this year now includes among everything else educational records. Going back to what you said earlier, it does protect both the employee and the employer. I think it's a good practice to have, you know, regardless and I think being fully documented is a good thing to know, so that you can deal and be completely transparent with your employees, particularly in performance reviews or if anything, you know, untoward happens. Do you have anything to add to that, Alex? Yeah. And, yeah, the final thing I would close on is we make it easy for you. The softwares that Paychex and Paycor has make it easy for you to be compliant with those personnel file laws or the the know your rights act law. Because we our software allows for you to use it in a way where it only takes a couple minutes of your time to upload it and send it out to people opposed to trying to track down individual employees, type in all their emails, whatever it may be. You can keep your files and records in a safe and secure place for you to view and for you to share with employees pretty seamlessly. So let us help you make your life easier to be compliant here. Alex, that was terrific. Thank you very much. As always, information, your advice is great and you're really, really good at your job. So I want to thank you for being a part of this three part series. I And want to thank all of you who are watching this series as well. Hopefully you've seen all three parts. I know it's tough doing business in California, but I will tell you as somebody from Philadelphia, you all live in a beautiful state. It's a very nice place, so maybe there is no regulations to follow, but I think it's worth it. I want to thank you for attending this webinar series. We covered each of these topics in just fifteen to twenty minutes, so for those of you that's been here, I hope you've gotten a lot of great information out of it. So if you want additional resources, PDFs, articles on all these topics, can go into the find resources part of your console. As you can spare just please a few minutes as we close to complete this brief survey that's going to pop up that will help you and help us make sure that we are giving you better information as we are going forward. So Alex, thank you again for all your time on this. It's been fantastic. Thank you all for watching and hope you have learned and we have helped you run your businesses that much better. Now you live in California, go out and enjoy the day. We will see you later. Take care.