How to manage minor labor compliance

Updated

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 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 labor law standards

At this time, 7shifts applies the following federal mandates for 14 and 15 year old employees 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, the system will apply the M indicator but there are no federal mandates that will apply to this age group.

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: 

  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. Scroll down and select Save to complete the changes.

Set up the school calendar

Setting up a school calendar is essential for determining when specific minor labor laws apply. This configuration allows 7shifts to automatically switch between school-session and non-school-session rules for maximum hours and curfews.

Important: The school calendar must be configured for the system to accurately detect and flag these compliance exceptions.

  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. Select Save.

Note: At this time, the system automatically omits weekends (Saturday and Sunday) from the school session dates and only one school calendar can be set per account.

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.

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 applicable federal rules, 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 specific age based work restrictions.

Scheduling 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, an exception warning will appear for Admins and Managers/Assistant Managers (with permissions) in the following areas:

On the Schedule page

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 a minor exception, a warning modal will appear; indicating the type of exception.

Before publishing a schedule, if there are minor labor exceptions that will be incurred, you will see a summary showing the number of exceptions and details of each exception:

In the Shift Pool & Trade Requests

You will also see a warning when assigning shifts through the Shift pool and Trade requests that could cause an exception:

In Reports

The Labor Exceptions Report:

Next steps

  1. Add birth dates to all employee profiles to trigger automatic minor detection.
  2. Configure your school calendar to ensure curfew and hour limits are accurate for your region.
  3. 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

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