California is not a harder version of federal employment law. It is a different system with its own thresholds, its own leave entitlements, its own overtime arithmetic, and its own enforcement mechanisms, several of which allow a single employee to bring a claim on behalf of everyone who was treated the same way.
Employers rarely fail here through bad intent. They fail because a handbook was adopted from a template written for another state, because a practice was set once and never revisited when the law moved, or because the person who understood the arrangement left and took the reasoning with them. The exposure accumulates quietly, per employee, per pay period, and becomes visible only when somebody has a reason to look.
This service reads what you actually do, compares it to what is currently required, ranks the gaps by exposure rather than by ease, and closes them in that order.
The boundary
Compliance work is HR work, not legal work. What is done here is the reading of your practice against published requirements, the drafting of policy and process, and the building of the record.
Where a question turns on how a court would read a statute, on the risk of a particular claim, or on whether to correct a past underpayment, it goes to employment counsel. Working alongside your counsel is normal here, and it is cheaper for you when the material arriving at their desk is already organized.
The audit
What gets examined.
Handbook and policy set
Whether the policies say what you do, whether they say anything unlawful, whether the acknowledgments were actually collected, and whether the arbitration, confidentiality, and non-disparagement language has been reviewed since the rules governing it changed.
Classification
Exempt status tested against duties actually performed and against the salary floor, not against job titles. Independent contractors tested against California’s statutory test. Interns, volunteers, and commissioned staff examined separately, because each has its own trap.
Hours, meals, and rest
Daily and weekly overtime, double time, seventh-day rules, meal timing and waivers, rest period practice, on-call and travel time, reporting time, and whether the timekeeping system is configured to detect a violation or merely to record one.
Leave administration
Family and medical leave, pregnancy disability, paid sick leave and any local ordinance sitting above it, reproductive loss and bereavement, jury duty and voting, victim and crime-related leave, and the accommodation process. Most of the difficulty is in the overlaps, and the overlaps are where designations go missing.
Notices, postings, and training
Required postings and their currency, the wage notice given at hire and on change, pamphlets that must be handed over at particular moments, harassment prevention training for supervisors and staff, and the completion records that prove any of it happened.
Records and reporting
Personnel file structure and separation of medical and immigration material, retention periods, response procedures for employee record requests, workplace violence prevention and injury and illness prevention documentation, and any size-triggered reporting obligation that applies to you.
Deliverables
What you are left holding.
A compliance project that ends in a conversation has produced nothing. Each of these is a document you keep, in a form your next HR hire, your counsel, or an auditor can pick up and use.
- A findings memorandum listing each gap, what creates it, what it exposes you to, and what closing it involves, ranked by exposure.
- A remediation plan with owners and dates, separating what must be fixed now from what can wait for the next handbook cycle.
- A rebuilt handbook and policy set, written for your organization and in language your staff can follow, with a distribution and acknowledgment process that leaves evidence.
- Classification determinations recorded with their reasoning, so that the next person to ask why a role is exempt has an answer that is not somebody’s recollection.
- Process documents for the recurring events: leave intake, accommodation, complaint handling, discipline, and separation.
- A compliance calendar carrying the recurring obligations and their deadlines, so the next twelve months are diarized rather than remembered.
Nothing on this page is legal advice. California employment requirements change annually, several California cities impose obligations above the state floor, and how any rule applies depends on facts specific to your organization. Requirements are verified against current published authority inside an engagement, and legal questions are referred to your employment counsel.