Washington Labor Compliance
7shifts helps employers in Washington maintain compliance with regional labor requirements by providing tools to manage scheduling and labor exceptions. 7shifts allows you to enable state-specific rules, track jurisdictional exceptions for Seattle, and monitor premium pay requirements through integrated reporting.
Things to know
- Access to labor compliance features may require an upgrade from your current 7shift plan.
- The Labor Exceptions report is only available for accounts using 7punches or a POS labor integration.
- Fair Workweek Seattle is only required for companies with 500 or more employees worldwide. Only enable the Advanced Labor settings if your company qualifies.
Enable Washington labor compliance
Admins can enable compliance settings at the company level to apply them to all locations by default.
If you need to set or customize these compliance options for specific locations, you can do so by navigating to the Locations settings for the relevant location and modifying the Labor & Compliance section there. Learn how to set Location-Level Settings here: Labor & Compliance Settings
- Log in as an Admin on the web app.
- In the left navigation bar, head to Settings > Company Settings.
- Select the Labor & Compliance tab.
- Under Jurisdiction, select Washington or Washington - Seattle.
- Review and set your overtime, break, custom break, and wages & pay settings.
- Under the Advanced Labor section, select the compliance options according to your preferences.
- Select Save to complete these changes.
Note: To restore default Washington rules and overtime settings, select Re-sync labor & compliance settings.
Seattle jurisdictional exceptions
Selecting the Washington - Seattle jurisdiction provides access to specific labor exceptions required by local ordinances.
Right to Rest
Employees require a 10-hour rest period after a previous day's shift. A warning appears on the schedule if a shift falls within a rest period. If the employee punches in, a premium is paid equivalent to 1.5 times the employee's base rate for all hours worked within that rest period.
Schedule change advanced notice
Employers in Seattle must provide work schedules at least 14 days in advance. Premiums based on the Seattle Secure Scheduling Ordinance are required if a published schedule is changed within that 14-day window.
- Employers owe one hour of pay at the regular rate if they add hours, change shift dates, or change start and end times.
- Employers owe 50% of the regular rate of pay for each hour not worked if they send an employee home early, subtract hours, or cancel a shift.
- Employees are owed 50% of the regular rate of pay for scheduled on-call hours if they are required to be on-call but are not called into work.
Exemptions
Predictability Pay is not required for employee-requested changes such as shift swaps or time-off requests.
Important: Fair Workweek Seattle is only required for companies with 500 or more employees worldwide. Only enable the Advanced Labor settings if your company qualifies.
View labor exception warnings
Exception warnings appear for Admins and Managers across several areas of 7shifts to help reduce labor costs.
To avoid/reduce exceptions, you will be warned about potential exceptions as you make changes to your schedule. Each time you create or make a change to a shift that causes an exception, a warning modal will appear indicating the type of exception and the associated cost.
Before publishing a schedule, if there are labor exceptions that will be incurred, you will see a summary showing the number of exceptions, the total cost, and details of each exception. Once published, the exceptions will be recorded in the report.
You will also see a warning when assigning shifts through the Shift Pool that could cause an exception:
On the Time Clocking page as an exception warning:
On a Punch Overview: