How to manage Minor Labor Compliance

7shifts helps you proactively manage labor law compliance for minor employees by identifying age-based restrictions and alerting managers to potential violations during the scheduling process. By entering an employee's birth date, the system automatically applies federal and state rules regarding maximum hours and curfews to help reduce legal risk and administrative overhead.

Things to Know

• 7shifts automatically detects minor status and displays a M indicator based on the birth date entered in the employee profile if the employee is under 18 years old.
• The Minor Labor Compliance feature that alerts for possible minor violations is currently available only to customers in the US and access may require an upgrade from your current 7shifts plan.
• Warnings for minor violations are not blockers, which means you can still publish a schedule even if a violation is present.
• Setting a school calendar in Company Settings is required to accurately determine when school-day versus non-school-day rules apply.
• Minor Compliance rules are read-only and sourced directly from federal and state law. They cannot be edited.
• Minors can only be assigned to one school calendar at a time. 
• School calendar management is available on web only. Mobile displays existing compliance warnings and the M indicator but does not support calendar creation or assignment.
• To prevent accidental data loss, school calendars cannot be deleted at this time.

Minor labor law standards

7shifts applies federal and state-level minor compliance rules based on the employee's age and jurisdiction settings.

For 14 and 15 year old employees, state rules apply if they are stricter than federal mandates. Otherwise, the following federal rules apply during school sessions:

• Maximum 3 hours on a school day.
• Maximum 8 hours on a non-school day.
• Maximum 18 hours during a school week.
• Curfew between 7:00 PM and 7:00 AM (9:00 PM and 7:00 AM from June 1 through to Labor Day).

For 16 and 17 year old employees, state rules apply. If the state has no minor labor rules for this age group, 7shifts will not apply any hour or curfew restrictions.

Managing the minor labor compliance setting

Minor Compliance is automatically enabled for eligible accounts to help you stay ahead of labor regulations. Once enabled, compliance tracking and proactive alerts are active for any employee with a birth date in their profile.

Steps to review or adjust the minor labor compliance setting at a company level:

1. Log in as an Admin on the web app.
2. In the left navigation bar, head to Settings > Company Settings.
3. Select the Labor & Compliance tab.
4. Navigate to the Minors section to toggle Minor labor compliance on or off.
5. Expand the jurisdiction rules dropdown to review the exact federal and state rules applied to your account.
6. Scroll down and select Save to complete the changes.

Note: Disabling Minor Labor Compliance stops the system from detecting scheduling violations, generating warnings, and prompting users to assign school calendars. (However, the M indicator and federal rule information will remain visible when hovering over the employee name on the schedule for reference.) 

Set up and manage school calendars

School calendars determine when specific minor labor rules apply. 7shifts uses the active school session dates you configure to automatically switch between school-session and non-school-session rules for maximum hours and curfews. Accounts can now create, edit, duplicate, and assign as many school calendars as needed.

Create a school calendar

1. In Company Settings, select the School Calendar tab.
2. Enter the date range for the active school session.
3. Define the standard school hours.
4. To automatically assign this calendar to all new minors added to the account, check Set default school calendar.
5. Select Save.

To add more calendars, select + Create school calendar. You can also duplicate an existing calendar by selecting the three-dot icon next to it and choosing Duplicate. To edit an existing calendar, click the pencil icon next to the calendar name and update the details as needed.

If minor compliance is enabled and an employer has not yet set a school calendar in Company Settings, any Admin user who goes to create a shift for a minor will see a calendar block on the shift modal prompting them to enter the school calendar information.

Assign a school calendar to a minor

If only one school calendar exists, 7shifts automatically assigns minors to it. Manual assignment is only needed when multiple calendars are in use. Each minor can only be assigned to one calendar at a time, and if a minor is reassigned, the most recent assignment applies.

Only employees identified as minors appear in the calendar assignment dropdown. Unassigned minors are grouped at the top of the dropdown list for easier identification.

To assign a specific calendar, use any of the following: 

Understanding minor indicators

With Minor Compliance enabled, an M indicator appears next to the names of employees under 18 throughout the account. Users with "can manage schedules" permissions can hover over this indicator to view the employee's age and their jurisdiction-specific rules based on the assigned school calendar, while the system proactively generates warnings for any scheduling infractions.

If the Minor Compliance setting is disabled, the M indicator and federal rule information will still remain visible for reference next to the employee's name. However, the system will not detect violations or generate any compliance warnings or alerts when scheduling those employees.

The M indicator appears next to minor employees across several areas:

• Employee profiles
• Weekly and daily schedule views
• The shift modal
• Printed Schedule (if selected)
• Who's Working dashboard
• The shift pool and shift trades
• Availability page

Hovering over the M indicator reveals the employee's age and their jurisdiction-specific work restrictions based on their assigned calendar.

Minor Compliance Warnings

Minor violations are treated similar to labor exceptions. These warnings highlight specific issues such as:

• Curfew conflicts
• Maximum daily or weekly hour limits
• School hour conflicts

When a shift conflicts with a minor labor rule, a red exclamation icon appears inline on the shift in the day and week schedule views. Admins and Managers/Assistant Managers with the appropriate permissions will also see exception warnings in the following areas:

Next steps

1. Add birth dates to all employee profiles to trigger automatic minor detection.
2. Create at least one school calendar and assign all minor employees to ensure curfew and hour limits are accurate.
3. Set a default school calendar so new minors are automatically assigned going forward.
4. Review your notification settings to ensure minor labor compliance notifications are enabled.

Related articles

Birthdays and Work Anniversaries
Update Employee Profiles
Minor labor compliance notifications for Admins & Managers