Compliance without a compliance department

In a company of twelve people, “compliance” is usually the owner, an office manager, and whoever handles payroll, each assuming one of the others has it covered. There is no department, no counsel on retainer, and no time to read the Labor Code. The good news is that the obligations are not as sprawling as they look. Almost all of them fall into one of three shapes, and once you sort them that way the job becomes a short set of lists rather than a body of law.

The first list is things you set up once and then maintain. Every California employer needs a written Injury and Illness Prevention Program. Most employers have also needed a written Workplace Violence Prevention Plan since July 1, 2024, along with a violent-incident log and training for staff. You need the required workplace postings up where employees can see them. And if you have fifteen or more employees, every job posting has to include a pay scale. None of this is difficult. It is simply easy never to have done.

The second list is things that happen on a calendar. January is the big one: the state minimum wage changes, and because the exempt salary floor is twice the state minimum for full-time work, every salaried role has to be checked against the new floor — $70,304 a year in 2026. New laws usually take effect January 1, and posters are reissued. Every pay period, each wage statement has to carry the itemised information the law requires. And if you have five or more employees, harassment-prevention training is due within six months of hire or promotion and every two years after that: two hours for supervisors, one hour for everyone else.

In short: the set-up-once list is a handful of written plans and postings, and the calendar list is anchored on January and on each pay period.

The third list is things triggered by an event, and this is where small companies actually get hurt, because events do not arrive on a schedule. A hire triggers day-one paperwork, including the written wage notice and the sick-leave information. A termination triggers a final paycheck that is due immediately, including accrued vacation. A complaint triggers a duty not to retaliate, which is the claim that sticks most often. A request for payroll records or a personnel file starts a statutory clock. Each of these has a deadline measured in days, and each one lands on whoever happens to be in the office that week.

The practical answer is to write each event down as a checklist the first time it happens, and to keep it somewhere the next person will find it. The second termination you handle should be faster and safer than the first, and the tenth should be routine. Most of the damage in small-company HR comes from handling every event from memory, as if for the first time.

There is one more habit that matters more than any single rule: keep the record at the moment the thing happens, not afterwards. A punch recorded when someone clocks in, an approval recorded when a manager approves, a notice recorded when it was handed over. Records made later are reconstructions, and reconstructions are what lose disputes. When a claim arrives two years from now, nobody will remember what was said. They will only be able to show what was written down.

So far: three lists — set-up, calendar, and event — and one habit, which is to record things when they happen rather than reconstructing them later.

None of this requires a specialist. It requires an hour to write the lists, a recurring reminder for January, and a place where events and records accumulate rather than living in someone’s inbox. That is a reasonable amount of work for a business owner, and it removes most of the risk that makes California feel hostile to small employers.

If you want a starting point, take the three lists above and mark each item as done, not done, or not sure. Treat everything in “not sure” as not done. In most small companies that column holds two or three items, and clearing them is an afternoon’s work.