The 3 Biggest HR Compliance Challenges Coming In 2024 

Broadly, HR compliance is about ensuring HR policies and procedures adhere to all applicable laws and ethics—and keeping them up-to-date as regulations change and the organization grows. 

With the expansion of movements like pay transparency, ban-the-box, and remote work (in which employers are hiring across state lines), HR compliance is now more complicated than ever before. 

To prepare and strategize for a more complex compliance future, keep reading to find out what are slated to be the top compliance issues of 2024 (and how to plan for them). 

Pay Transparency 

Today’s employees want to work for employers that pay them fairly for the work they put in—and that pay all workers fairly regardless of gender, race, or disability. As a result, employers notice that greater pay transparency—beyond simply building trust and promoting fairness—also helps them attract and retain top talent. In some cases, they don’t have a choice. 

Pay transparency, also known as salary transparency or wage transparency, refers to the practice of openly sharing information about compensation with employees and job candidates. While the level of transparency varies from company to company, it generally involves providing details about how salaries are decided and disclosing salary ranges with the goal of creating fairer pay practices. 

Today, 17 states in the U.S. have some sort of pay transparency law in place, with states like California, Colorado, and Connecticut leading the way. In November 2022, New York City also started requiring employers to post salary ranges for every job posting, and more cities and states are expected to follow suit. 

To prepare for a future with stricter pay transparency laws, companies should audit their pay structures for disparities and start the tricky work of job leveling ahead of time. They should also develop a change management plan that prepares managers to support leveling initiatives when they’re eventually rolled out. 

Ban-the-Box 

Ban-the-Box is a national movement aimed at eliminating the checkbox on job applications that asks applicants if they have a criminal record. The purpose is to provide individuals with criminal histories a fair chance at obtaining employment by delaying inquiries into their criminal background until later stages of the hiring process.

Ban-the-box varies from state to state and from one jurisdiction to another, and it may apply differently to private employers, public employers, or both. The consequences of ignoring ban-the-box legislation often include a high price tag and a major hit to a company’s reputation. 

Due to their novelty and political complexity, ban-the-box laws are changing regularly. Some states and cities (like Chicago) are expanding regulations, while others (like Texas) are rolling them back. These fluctuations are expected to keep happening—especially now that the 

the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has announced its final regulations for the Fair Chance Act, ensuring that workers with criminal history records are provided a fair opportunity to compete for employment within the federal government and its contractor organizations.

To stay compliant as ban-the-box laws continue to evolve, HR departments should run an internal audit of all forms, interview questions, policies, and procedures to see if they’re up to date with ban-the-box standards across the country, then make adjustments, which might look like delaying the inquiry into an applicant’s criminal history until later in the hiring process, conducting individualized assessments, or eliminating the inquiry from the process altogether. 

Labor Relations 

If the SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023 have taught us anything, it’s that the tastes, attitudes, and behaviors of the modern workforce have changed for good, and employers are slow to catch up. 

That’s likely why strike activity doubled in 2022, and the number of workers involved jumped 60% year over year, according to a new “Labor Action Tracker” report from Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The tracker provides a comprehensive database of up-to-date strike and labor protest activity across the United States.

Labor relations is the relationship between employees, their exclusive representatives, and management. Simply put, it’s how employers negotiate with and respond to workers’ collective bargaining power. Colloquially, it points to the relationship between employers and unions, but it’s used interchangeably today to mean the relationship between employers and employees in any industry. 

With a large auto workers’ strike and other walkouts on the horizon, strike activity is expected to keep rising in 2024, meaning employers everywhere need to grow their expertise around the laws, rules, regulations, case law, principles, and practices related to negotiating and administering agreements. To expand that expertise, human resources can: 

• Hire a labor relations expert who can solve complex issues that arise between employees and employers, negotiate contracts, and protect the businesses’ reputation. 
• Hire a part-time consultant if a full-time resource isn’t possible.
• Expand the knowledge of the current HR team through training and certifications. 
• When recruiting, hire for the skill set by making certain skills a job requirement. 

For more insights into HR compliance for 2024 and tips for avoiding trouble with the law, check out this week’s episode of America Back to Work: Expert Interview Series. We’re sitting down with Pavithri Kilgore, an HR consultant focused on risk mitigation and an expert in pay transparency, background screening compliance, and labor relations.