September is the operational reset month for US HR. Employees come back from PTO. Hiring restarts, and budget conversations open for projects that begin in Q1. Q4 planning gets underway before the year closes. The seven checks below cover the compliance items most likely to have shifted since summer 2025. Each one follows the same shape: the rule, what changed recently, and what to do this month.
This fall HR compliance checklist is useful for US-based HR leaders, people operations managers, and small-business owners running HR in-house. You can use it as a US HR audit checklist before the end of Q4 planning. It matters most for teams under 500 people with a multi-state footprint or remote staff, where employment law grows more complex every year.
General guidance, and not legal advice. Confirm anything here with counsel before acting on it.
1. Are Your Job Postings Still Compliant With Pay Transparency Laws?
The rule. In 2026, twelve states now require a salary range inside the job posting itself: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Washington (sourced: July 2026). Eighteen states and DC have some form of pay transparency obligation. Illinois covers employers with 15 or more people and asks for a general description of benefits alongside the range.
What changed. Massachusetts phased in during 2025, with the posting rule in force since 29 October 2025 (sourced: July 2026), and the Illinois Equal Pay Act amendment took effect on 1 January 2025. Pay transparency also became a market expectation in the US ahead of the law, because a posted range makes an employer more competitive for candidates.
Do this in September. Pull every open req and every role you are about to post. Confirm the range and the benefits summary where a state requires it. Check that remote postings carry the disclosure whenever someone could perform the work in a covered state, which is the most common gap. Then lock the ATS template so the range field stays mandatory. This is a good moment to work from salary bands instead of one-off numbers. A posting then draws its range from the band that role will sit in once you hire.
2. Have You Audited Every AI Tool Used in Hiring or Employee Decisions?
The rule. New York City's Local Law 144 has been in force since 2023. It requires an annual bias audit of any automated employment decision tool, publication of the results, and at least 10 business days of notice to candidates. Illinois HB 3773 took effect on 1 January 2026 (sourced: July 2026). It amends the Illinois Human Rights Act. Using AI that discriminates in effect against a protected class now counts as a civil rights violation, as does using zip codes as a proxy. At the federal level, the EEOC's 2023 guidance applies Title VII to algorithmic tools. (Our first thought is that "algorithmic" is still a bit broad, but you still need to be delicate about it.)
What changed. Colorado moved in the opposite direction from what most 2025 planning assumed. The 2024 AI Act never took effect. A federal court blocked enforcement in April 2026. The state then repealed and replaced it with SB 26-189 in May 2026, a narrower disclosure framework for automated decision-making that takes effect on 1 January 2027 (sourced: July 2026). Colorado is now a 2027 planning item.
Do this in September. Inventory every tool that scores, ranks, or filters candidates or employees. Start with the ATS, because that is where filtering happens before anyone joins, and if you keep growing, your volumes could be large (one company recently repor$ted around 900 applicants for a role!). For each tool, capture the vendor, the use case, whether it makes or informs the decision, the date of the last bias audit, and the candidate notice language.
3. Are Your Independent Contractors Classified Correctly?
The rule. The federal test is the economic-reality analysis, and several states apply a stricter ABC test, among them California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Illinois. Arguments about classification have been going on for years, and people's ideas have changed. Back in 2019, a lawyer would very likely advise against giving a contractor a company laptop or a company email address. Both could serve later as evidence that the contractor was an employee in substance; or at least that was the narrative. Cross-border W-8 contracting softened that perception a lot.
What changed. Federal posture is fluid. The 2024 independent contractor rule still governs private FLSA litigation. The Department of Labor stopped enforcing it on 1 May 2025 and now works from Fact Sheet #13 and Opinion Letter FLSA2019-6. DOL published a proposal to rescind the 2024 rule on 27 February 2026, with comments closed on 28 April (sourced: July 2026). Confirm the enforcement posture again the week you publish or act.
Do this in September. List every 1099 engaged for more than 90 days or more than 20 hours a week. Run the federal test and the applicable state test. Convert to W-2 or write the classification analysis down and date it before Q4. With limited time, weigh the review toward domestic contractors over people abroad.
4. Do Your Overtime and After-Hours Rules Match Current Law?
The rule. The federal salary threshold for the white-collar exemptions sits at $684 a week, or $35,568 a year (sourced: July 2026). California, New York, and Washington set higher minimum standards of their own.
What changed. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated the 2024 rule in November 2024, before it could raise the threshold. DOL then published a technical amendment in May 2026 that formally rescinded that rule and reinstated the 2019 level. State and local governments are also considering "right-to-disconnect" bills, though none have passed at the state level (sourced: July 2026). This is newer ground than overtime and is worth keeping an eye on.
Do this in September. Start with exempt classifications and re-check each one against the federal threshold and any state threshold that applies. Pull the last 90 days of non-exempt timesheets alongside Slack, Teams, and email activity, and look for off-the-clock work. Consider a way to switch off Slack and Teams after hours. California employers need to make sure that the payments for meal and rest premiums are going through correctly.
5. Are Pregnancy and Disability Accommodations Handled Correctly?
The rule. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act has been in force since June 2023, with EEOC final regulations effective June 2024. Its accommodation bar sits lower than the ADA's "substantially limits" standard. The PUMP Act requires reasonable break time and a private, non-bathroom space for one year after birth. In our glossary entry on maternity leave, we talk about how these duties fit in with the right to time off.
Do this in September. Make sure that the PWFA workflow for accommodations doesn't need a medical diagnosis or a specific form, as the interactive process is sufficient on its own. Managers should know that pregnancy-related includes getting better, having morning sickness, breastfeeding, fertility treatment, and losing a pregnancy. Look at how much nursing space is available at all of your locations, including the satellite offices that opened recently.
6. Do You Know Where Your Remote Employees Are?
The rule. When a remote worker moves to a different state, you'll be (directly or indirectly) liable for registering them for unemployment insurance or maybe even adjusting to the minimum wage (also, many desk workers who work remotely don't live by the minimum wage, so this is unlikely). A headquarters in one state does not mean only that state's law applies. Someone working from California, New York, or abroad pulls those rules toward the employer. The same rules apply to data obligations. Our guide to US state privacy laws and HR data goes over these rules.
Do this in September. Send every remote and hybrid employee one question, with a seven-day deadline: "where is your primary work location today?" Cross-check the answers against the payroll state, the W-2 state, and the HRIS record. Start registering people who moved to the state right away, because it takes four to eight weeks. For brand-new contracts, have the worker list their main place of work in the contract itself. Since many moves happen after the school year, after summer is the best time for this.
7. Are Handbooks, Notices, and Acknowledgments Current?
The rule. Handbook language falls under NLRB scrutiny through the Stericycle standard from August 2023, which invalidated a good deal of previously routine wording. It remains the operative test in 2026.
Do this in September. Make sure that the handbook includes the latest information on pay transparency, the PWFA, the PUMP Act, state leave laws, AI tool disclosures as needed, and work rules that will still apply after Stericycle. If there is a dispute, anything older than 18 months doesn't matter much, so redistribute it and get new acknowledgments. Check that all state and federal posters are up-to-date, and send digital copies to remote employees.
One practical shortcut: ask an agentic coding tool to report when each section was last edited. A date from 2024 flags a section worth reading thoroughly, and that lets you work through the handbook section by section instead of all at once.
HR Compliance September 2026: What Good Looks Like by the 30th
Five statements, each answerable in writing. Read these and say out loud "yes" or "no" and you'll know if you have to act.
- Every open posting is compliant in every state where someone could perform the role, whether that is Colorado, California, New York, or Texas. Prepare for the widest surface your hiring policy allows, so the work is behind you before a closed deal forces a hire in a new state.
- Every AI tool has a documented audit date, candidate notice, and a digital trail, with NYC and Illinois exposure identified.
- Every 1099 engaged beyond 90 days has a dated classification analysis under the federal test and any applicable state test.
- Every remote employee's work state matches payroll, tax withholding, and the HRIS record.
- Every employee has acknowledged the current handbook within the last 12 months.
Any "no" or "not sure" on that list moves straight onto your Q4 HR compliance checks.
Make Your Compliance Easier With TalentHR
The fall reset is a documentation job above all. You won't have real working roadblocks from not doing it, no. Employees can still work even if you have an outdated file about where they work from. But it prevents a real storm (financial or legal) that could start building up. It also clears the ground to grow, because a company with its papers in order can hire in places a company without them cannot.
TalentHR is a lightweight, all-around HR platform that a team can start using in a few clicks. Employee records carry location and classification fields. Handbooks go out digitally with tracked read confirmations. Document storage holds AI-audit records and classification analyses with their dates. Time-off and time-tracking data feed the overtime review. Together, that leaves the audit trail that this checklist asks for.
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Frequently Asked Questions
When is the right time to run this reset?
The first two weeks of September. Employees are back. Hiring restarts, and there is still room to fix findings before Q4 planning locks. It also sets you up for the coming fiscal year instead of leaving the work to December.
We are a small team without in-house employment counsel. What should we outsource?
Outsource whatever you need a third party to attest to: the AI-tool audit, the contractor classification review, and the exempt-status review. The value is having someone else confirm the papers are in order, which gives you an external record as a fallback.
Do these checks apply to fully remote companies with no office?
Yes, and often more urgently. Obligations follow where an employee works instead of how the company was set up, so checks 1, 3, 6, and 7 matter most. A fully remote team can accumulate state obligations without noticing.
What if we find a problem? Do we self-report?
Almost never. Fix forward, and talk to employment counsel about the finding before any voluntary disclosure. The goal in September is a written record showing the company looked at and corrected what it found.
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