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Yes: labor law posters for remote employees are your obligation whenever you employ someone in the US who works from home, and the official copies cost $0, downloaded from the DOL’s poster hub and the other agency pages that publish them. A fully remote team may satisfy the federal posting rules for the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) with electronic notices alone, under three conditions the US Department of Labor (DOL) set out in Field Assistance Bulletin 2020-7. A hybrid team keeps the physical set up, with the electronic copy as a supplement.
What changes by state is whether a physical display is still needed alongside the electronic copy for remote employees. In California, Labor Code § 1207 lets an employer email the required notices to each employee, and it does not alter the obligation to physically display them.
New York goes further and requires the digital layer: under Labor Law § 201, a notice that must be physically posted must also be made available through the employer’s website or by email, and employees must be told that the electronic copies exist. Every poster named here is free from the agency that publishes it, so the whole duty costs setup time rather than a vendor invoice.
The federal rule for remote teams
The federal answer on whether you must provide labor law posters to remote employees is yes, with an electronic route: a fully remote team may meet its federal posting duties with electronic notices alone, where all of the employer’s employees exclusively work remotely, all employees customarily receive information from the employer via electronic means, and all employees have readily available access to the electronic posting at all times. Those conditions come from the DOL’s Field Assistance Bulletin 2020-7, issued in December 2020, which sets out electronic posting for the FLSA, FMLA, EPPA and the federal service contract statutes.
The three-condition route applies to the continuous-posting statutes, the ones federal law says an employer must post and keep posted: the FLSA minimum wage notice, the FMLA general notice and the EPPA notice. The FLSA’s own rule, quoted in the bulletin, requires a US employer with any employee subject to the FLSA’s minimum wage, overtime or nursing-mothers provisions to post and keep posted a notice explaining the FLSA in conspicuous places in every establishment.
A hybrid team does not qualify for electronic-only posting. Where an employer has employees onsite and other employees teleworking full time, the bulletin says the employer may supplement a hard-copy posting with electronic posting, and the DOL would encourage both methods. In practice the office set stays on the wall, and the remote staff get their own electronic copy that stays reachable.
The other group is individual notices, which the statutes deliver to each employee rather than pin to one wall. For the McNamara O’Hara Service Contract Act (SCA) and Section 14(c) certificates, the bulletin accepts email delivery to each covered employee who customarily gets information that way, and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) notice works the same: the DOL’s poster FAQs allow it to be distributed by direct handling, mailing or email as long as the full text of the notice is provided.
Which federal posters you owe
| Federal labor law poster | Which employers must post it | Official free source |
|---|---|---|
| FLSA minimum wage poster | Any US employer with an employee subject to the FLSA’s minimum wage, overtime or nursing-mothers rules (29 C.F.R. § 516.4) | DOL poster hub |
| FMLA general notice | Employers with 50 or more employees in 20 or more workweeks | DOL poster hub |
| EPPA polygraph notice | Most US private employers | DOL poster hub |
| Job Safety and Health poster | Most US private-sector employers (29 C.F.R. § 1903.2) | OSHA poster page |
| Know Your Rights poster | Employers covered by federal equal employment law | EEOC poster page |
| Your Rights Under USERRA | Employers with USERRA-covered staff | DOL poster FAQs |
| SCA and Walsh-Healey notices | Employers on covered federal service or supply contracts | DOL poster hub |
Which of these apply to you is a facts question, and the DOL’s elaws Poster Advisor answers it directly: answer the questions about the business, its industry and its workforce, and the tool lists every federal DOL poster owed. Coverage genuinely varies with the facts, which is why the table states who owes each notice rather than counting on a vendor’s all-in-one set.
Every notice in the table is free in its official form: the DOL’s poster FAQs say you may download and print its posters yourself, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) posts its poster as a free download on its own page. A download from the agency is also the current version, where a laminated package bought years ago can sit quietly out of date.
Remote hiring adds one applicant-facing duty: the DOL asks employers to carry a prominent notice on the hiring page, a line stating that applicants have rights under federal employment laws, linking the FMLA and EPPA posters. Candidates who never visit an office still see their rights that way.
What electronic posting requires
Federal labor law posters can be posted electronically only when the electronic copy behaves like a break-room wall: visible to every employee at any time, without asking anyone. The DOL’s conditions mean an employee must be able to reach the notice without having to specifically request permission, and the employer must inform employees of where and how to access the notice electronically; where the employer has not, the requirement is not met.
The bulletin compares a posting on an unknown or little known electronic location to hiding a paper notice in a custodial closet, and employees also have to be able to tell which electronic posting applies to them and their worksite. On a team spread over several states, that points to one permanent home for the notices, an intranet page or a pinned document, where each state’s set is named and reachable without asking anyone.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) applies the same logic to its Know Your Rights poster: a covered employer may post it digitally in a conspicuous location on the employer’s website, and for teleworkers who do not visit the workplace on a regular basis, digital posting may be the only posting there is. The agency also publishes the poster in HTML and audio formats, which suits reading on a screen.
State rules for remote workers
| State | What its rule says | Where to check |
|---|---|---|
| California | An employer may email a required notice to employees, and Labor Code § 1207 keeps the physical display duty in place | Department of Industrial Relations list of required postings |
| New York | Notices that must be physically posted must also be available digitally, on the employer’s website or by email, and employees must be told so | Labor Law § 201, New York State Senate |
| Other states | No federal rule overrides a state’s own posting law, so the state’s labor department decides what a remote employee there must receive | DOL directory of state labor offices |
The reason to check the work state is where the duty attaches: federal posting language points at conspicuous places in every establishment, and for a remote employee that establishment is the home workplace in their own state. That is a practical reading of the federal wording rather than a stated federal rule, so the employee’s work state is the state to check.
The same work-state logic drives the payroll side of hiring across state lines, where an employer registers with each state’s unemployment insurance agency and files quarterly wage reports there. Multi-state payroll processing starts with that registration, and the posting check slots into the same state-by-state setup.
California’s list shows how much sits at the state layer: the California Workplace: Know Your Rights notice due each February 1, payday notices under Labor Code § 207, a workers’ compensation poster that comes from the insurance carrier, a whistleblower notice in lettering above size 14, and Cal/OSHA’s Form 300A during February. The state’s Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) page says nothing about remote workers, which is why the § 1207 email route matters for a distributed team there.
The posting rules sit inside the broader obligations for remote employees that come with a US hire: payroll registration, workers’ compensation coverage, the I-9 verification form and the employee handbook. The state that sets the notices sets the rest too, so one state-by-state pass covers both.
When your remote hire is abroad
US posters announce rights under US statutes, so they belong with staff employed in the US. A remote hire in another country answers to that country’s own notice rules, part of the wider legal picture that opens when you hire a foreign remote worker. The work-state logic scales up the same way: the country where the person works is the country whose rules apply.
Penalties for missing posters
The penalty for not posting labor law posters depends on which agency stands behind the notice, and two of them publish hard numbers. The EEOC’s penalty for a covered employer that fails to post its “Know Your Rights” poster is currently $680, adjusted annually for inflation, per the EEOC poster page.
OSHA treats posting failures as citable violations, with a maximum of up to $16,550 per violation for penalties assessed after January 15, 2026, per the OSHA penalties page. The same page sets the willful or repeated maximum at $165,514, and posting failures sit in the lower band.
The DOL publishes no fixed dollar fine for the FLSA poster itself, and its own pages make the fix free: the posters cost nothing to download. What catches employers is usually the vendor letter, an official-looking mailing from a private compliance company selling poster packages. The official copies are free either way, and OSHA’s poster page says it plainly: do not pay a third-party vendor for it.
How to deliver the posters
1. List each employee’s work state
Giving labor law posters to remote employees starts with the work state: an employee working from home in Texas is owed the Texas notices even when the company sits in another state. Build the list from each person’s work address, which the records kept when onboarding a remote employee already hold.
2. Run the elaws Poster Advisor
The elaws Poster Advisor turns the facts of the business into the federal set: answer the questions on industry, workforce and location, and the tool lists every federal DOL poster owed. For a remote team it replaces guessing at coverage lines like FMLA’s 50-employee threshold.
3. Add the state notices from that state’s labor office
Each work state adds its own notices, from wage notices to workers’ compensation posters, and that state’s labor department publishes the current list. The DOL keeps a directory of state labor offices covering every state where the team sits, and each state’s own page is the free source for its notices.
4. Post them where everyone can reach them at any time
An intranet page or a shared drive that everyone can open without asking permission is the electronic version of the break-room wall, and it is what the federal conditions ask for: continuous access, no permission gate, and a clear note to employees of where the copies live. Pinned documents work too, when the platform keeps them reachable.
5. Email the copies and say where they live
Email the PDFs as well, and say in the email where the permanent copies live. California allows email distribution of a workplace notice on top of the physical display under Labor Code § 1207, and the email doubles as the note to employees that the federal guidance asks for.
FAQ
Yes. A remote employee in the US is covered by the same posting statutes as an office employee, and the DOL’s Field Assistance Bulletin 2020-7 sets how the notices reach them: electronically when the whole team is remote and the three conditions hold, or as an electronic supplement to the physical set on a hybrid team.
Yes, when three conditions hold: every employee works remotely exclusively, every employee customarily receives information from the employer electronically, and every employee has readily available access to the posting at all times. Those are the DOL’s conditions from Field Assistance Bulletin 2020-7, and a hybrid team keeps the physical posting with the electronic copy as a supplement.
Yes: every federal poster is free as a download from the agency that issues it, and state labor departments publish their notices free as well. Private companies sell poster packages, but paying for the official copies is never part of the requirement.
Yes, when they come from the agency itself: a poster downloaded from dol.gov, osha.gov or eeoc.gov is the official notice, and the DOL’s poster FAQs say you may download and print them yourself for free. A private compliance company mailing an official-looking letter is not a government agency; the official copies cost nothing, and OSHA’s word on its own poster is to not pay a third-party vendor for it.
Yes, if they are employed in the US: the posting duties follow an employee to their home state, whatever the company’s own address. Run the elaws Poster Advisor for the federal set, check the labor department in each employee’s work state for state notices, and put everything where the whole team can reach it at any time.
