VANNOY:
There is a new I nine form and it has new remote verification rules among other things, a really important topic, this is maybe the most common area where we see clients in small business and entrepreneurs get in trouble is the I nine. It’s so simple yet you got to get it right. Otherwise it could be so expensive. Got the perfect guest to unpack this with me. If you’re a regular watcher of the show, Mary Simmons Mary is our Vice President of HR compliance at As Assure. She’s a S H RMM certified professional and for the past eight years, she has been an adjunct professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Prior to as Assure Mary was the director of HR consulting for a 58 year old HR consulting firm in New York. Welcome back Mary.
SIMMONS:
Thanks, Mike.
VANNOY:
Okay, so I think probably we’re going to have a mixed audience here today where some people know exactly what the I nine is, they know exactly how to do it correctly, but when we did our survey, so many people watching today will know and remember we surveyed 2065 small and mid-size companies and we asked them all kinds of questions around hr. Specifically, we asked questions around the I nine, how do you fill it out? Do you train your managers? How to inspect? How to verify identity? And the results were kind of shocking. We saw a big spread in high performing companies versus low performing companies around things like recruiting and employee development and employee retention. But this is an area where seemingly all companies that seem to struggle equally high performing and low performing companies was about one in five of all businesses by their own self-reporting are at risk for doing I nines wrong. So let’s step back for five minutes and just can you just explain what the I nine is, what was the genesis of the I nine? What’s its intent and why this is so important?
SIMMONS:
Yeah, absolutely, Mike, and like you said, this seems to be such a simple topic, yet we find that a lot of the employers that we support do get this wrong and that’s what we’re here for to support them. And that’s why we’re conducting this webinar for a larger audience. So the US Citizen and Immigration Services or ICE has the I nine form to be completed by all employers. So a lot of times I’ll have employers say to me, well, am I exempt? And I’m like, I don’t know where you got that idea. It’s all employers in the United States have to fill this out for all of their employees. What it is doing, Mike, it is verifying the identity and the employment authorization of individuals, whether they’re a citizen or a non-citizen. So a trick question that I will have when I’m teaching my S H RMM certification class at New York Institute of Technology, as I’ll say, is the I nine to prove citizenship for the employee and half my audience gets it wrong. So you can be a non-citizen, but be authorized to work in the United States, and that’s what it’s meant for Mike to authorize employment
VANNOY:
Administered by ice. This is an outcome of nine 11 and ICE is part of Department of Homeland Security. Do I have that right?
SIMMONS:
It’s not out of nine 11. It existed before nine 11. And I guess the only exemption I should mention for employers out there is if you have an employee that was hired prior to 1986, you don’t have to have an I nine for those individuals, but anybody employed after that, you do need an I nine. And then D H SS is going to oversee this. So ICE created it, ICE is going to do the audits, and they will come into an employer. Mike, sometimes they give you three days. That’s the most I’ve ever had an employer have. You have three days to get your I nines in order and then we’ll be back. But a lot of times they will come in and start auditing right away. And that would be if there was a complaint about the I nine process.
VANNOY:
Right, right. Okay. So I confused the nine 11 because this got tucked under Homeland Security, which was an output of nine 11, but it’s been there longer. Thank you. And the exemption of employees who have worked for you prior to 1986, boy, we’re what? We’re
SIMMONS:
35
VANNOY:
Ish years. I mean, there aren’t too many of those around I suspect anymore. So this is everybody and everybody with a W two, right? I mean technically this would include even family members.
SIMMONS:
Absolutely. It includes owners, right? If they’re an employee. And so if in doubt, please do an I nine. Absolutely. It includes family members. I’m glad you brought that up, Mike. I get that question all the time, which kind of confuses me like, well, are they employees then? Yes. And it has to be done within three days of employment. And that tends to be also a sticking point. So when we help employers create their onboarding process, which is going to include the I nine form and quite a few other forms, you also have to come up with a process that those forms are going to be filled out. So what we always try to do is suggest that the I nine information go out ahead of time so those individuals can have time to collect their identification. There’s different forms of identification that your employees or your candidates, if you will, when they become employees, can give you to satisfy the I nine. And sometimes people are like, oh, I don’t know where my passport is. Oh, I lost my driver’s license. So if people are, let’s just say giving two weeks notice, I like to tell them right up front, once they accept that offer, let’s get this process going. You need those forms within three days of hire Mike or they cannot start work,
VANNOY:
Right? Right. Yeah. I love the word choice you use, you said candidates, not employees because this is the legal requirement to prove that they are eligible to work. And I think this is, especially in I’d say startup, family oriented entrepreneurial companies, right? Small businesses. It’s like it’s my daughter. Of course she’s authorized, I don’t need to verify her identity. I had her, I know this sounds extreme, but if an ICE agent walked into your door, they don’t know that’s your daughter working at say the front desk or
SIMMONS:
They don’t care
VANNOY:
And they don’t care and they just don’t care. Somebody could easily lie and say, oh, that’s my mom, that’s my daughter. I mean, there’s a million reasons why they don’t care and it’s not their job. It is your job as a business owner to do it for all candidates to verify their identity, fill out the I nine to prove that they can work for you. So it really is that simple. Right?
SIMMONS:
Exactly. And hopefully if our audience has listened to the other webinars you and I do, the one word I use all the time is consistency. You have to be consistent, right? The federal government’s telling us every employee has to have an I nine. And I’m going to back that up by saying you have to be consistent. You can’t say, I’m going to fill out I nines for everybody else but my family members. You don’t have to fill out the I nine, right? So from an internal standpoint, that’s creating inconsistencies externally, you’re still going to get fined on that. That’s not an excuse that they’re a family member.
VANNOY:
Alright, so let’s jump to the meat. It’s changed. Now candidly, it’s a super simple form, so there’s not a heck of a lot to change, but it did change three things that I think I want to talk about today. One, it got simpler. We went from two pages to one. Let’s talk about why and what that might mean for someone. Number two, this topic, it’s less common perhaps, but around translators for non-English speaking. And then I think the biggie that probably most people are going to care about is this new pilot program around people not using E-Verify. Can they use E-Verify if they’re not using E-Verify? How do you verify identity for remote employees? The remote trend was happening is the continuum was long before covid. Covid accelerated like crazy. But now remote work is just a standard thing in the online. I think it was pretty far behind in
SIMMONS:
No, it definitely was. Mike, we have lots of clients that even before the pandemic, they had a salesperson, let’s just say in 10 different states, how are they going to verify that I nine? Now there are ways to do it. You can go to a notary and have the information notarized, but you’re right. I’m really happy that they’ve made some changes to help with remote. So let me back it up for a second. So first of all, the new form came out August 1st, so it just came out and employers must start using that form no later than October 31st, 2023. So this year, look, I’m just going to say because I’m process driven and I want to make sure everybody’s compliant, please just start using the new form. Now, I’m not quite sure why we’d wait, so I’m just going to say that, but you have until October 31st.
So those are sort of the basics. Okay? So the second thing is, like you said, it’s gone to one page. Now if anybody’s an HR nerd like me, it used to be one page for a very long time. Every couple of years there’s new iterations of the form. Now the last form that we had is of course expired because they’ve been trying to change it for a while. I think it’s almost a year expired, but that’s the only one that anybody could use. And the one thing about that form that they had changed, Mike, is that every single cell, every area on that form had to have something in it. So in other words, if there’s a space for first name, middle name, last name, and the candidate does not have a middle name, you had to put not applicable. The new form is not quite as stringent. And that sounds like a really small change, but it’s not. From my point of view, when we do I nine audits, we are always up to date on what are the ICE auditors looking for? Because we have a relationship with those auditors and I will call them and say, Hey, what are you looking for? What has changed? Because they changed what they look for with the form. And sometimes those little details, Mike will get you because they could find you on the old form if there was a space blank. Sounds a little crazy, but
VANNOY:
That’s what they did. A hundred percent. And that actually happens. You might think, think we’re being melodramatic here by simply not putting NA think, well this person culturally I would think, well, everybody has a middle name just because everybody I’ve ever known always has a middle name. We’re in a diverse world. Not everybody has a middle name. And so you hire someone who doesn’t have middle name. My husband, I’ll just leave that blank. You literally, and I’m not exaggerating, you literally just broke the law of doing that. Now are you going to get fined? We’re not saying that you’re going to get fined, but you just created a flag that if an ice agent ever walked in and audited you, it’s like, huh, they’re not following process here. Let me dig a little bit deeper,
SIMMONS:
And I will tell you, I’ve had employers get fined for those open spaces, and that’s a hard learned and that’s going to be a relatively small fine, but they add up and we’re going to talk about penalties in a minute, but let’s talk about what has changed. The other thing that I think is important, so I think employers might be saying, oh, now it’s down to one page. What did they take off? How did they do that? So if you remember, if the audience remembers the first page at the bottom, there was a place to put the information for a translator. So if the individual that you’re hiring cannot read English, they can use a translator, but the translator has to sign their name and give some information, print their name, sign their name, et cetera. Well that has moved to a separate form. So if the individual needs a translator, you will have a separate form that you can fill that out on. So that’s something that I don’t want employers to forget that if there’s a translator being used, you use that second form and you fill that out. So that’s another thing that has changed. Now, to me, the most significant thing that changed is you talked about remote work. This is a way of life, I think going forward, definitely after the pandemic, but as I mentioned,
VANNOY:
It’s never going back the other way. There
SIMMONS:
Will always be, it’s never going back the other way. There
VANNOY:
Will always be local work, brick layers and cooks need to be on site to do the job. But increasingly more jobs, increasingly more and more jobs don’t have to be anywhere agreed, geographically located and employees. This is not changing.
SIMMONS:
And as I said, we have many clients. I think that’s probably why there are clients. A lot of organizations realize they don’t know what they don’t know. So they’re getting supported by ashore because we’re a national company, they have all these salespeople or a small remote office in different states. I’m telling you Mike, in the past they’d fly the people in. Then they started using notaries. And that can be time consuming. It can be a turnoff to new hires. So what the Department of Homeland Security D H Ss is doing is they have a pilot program right now, Mike that is called, they don’t, nothing’s short. So non E-verify remote documentation examination. Okay, so what do all those words mean right now with the new I nine form? If you’re an employer that has remote employees and you are not signed up for EFA Verify currently, and I’ll get back to E-Verify in a moment and explain it thoroughly.
You can utilize this pilot program and use E-Verify only for your remote employees for the pilot program to be accepted into that pilot program. Mike, you can’t have north of 500 employees, so it’s for an employer of less than 500 employees. Additionally, if you’re part of that pilot program, you’re going to have to do some reporting to D H S. And the reason for that is they’re very transparent about it. They’re testing this out to see if this makes sense to go forward as a formal program to verify remote employees. It makes a lot of sense, Mike. Let’s talk about what E-Verify is. E-VERIFY is a system that the federal government created for electronic verification through a federal database for the I nine identification of new employees. So we had done a webinar on this, so I want to point to everybody to more information on that, or you can just call me and I can walk you through it.
But E-Verify is mandated today for federal contractors. So those are organizations that have a contract with the federal government of $10,000 or more, and there’s a couple caveats to that. So it’s not inclusive of just those employers and it’s utilized again to verify identification. So the government is basically saying, Mike, well if you’re going to do business with us, we want you to make this extra check and use E-verify system to check that identification. And I will tell you it is also mandated in 20 plus states. It’s 20 states right now, but a couple are adopting it later this year and there’s different thresholds. So one state might say it’s only for employers of 25 employees or more to use E-Verify. And then I have plenty of employers, Mike, that say, I want to be doubly safe. I want to use E-Verify because if ICE comes in to do an audit, I want to feel secure that the identification that I received from my candidates are legitimate and meet that I nine.
So there are a lot of employers that have adopted this free system that is very easy to use. Mike, it’s three fields. It’s really not any more time consuming. You still have to fill out the nine form, but there’s a couple more steps just to put in the information for the identification that the employee slash candidate gave. The other requirement to be part of this pilot program is that the employer keeps hard copies or electronic copies of the documents that the employee gave them. So as you know, if I’m an employer not using E-Verify and I hire you to my organization, Mike, I don’t have to keep a hard or an electronic copy of your identification. I just have to take that non expired identification, fill out my I nine utilizing those forms, but I don’t have to keep copies If I keep copies for some consistency, I have to keep it for all of them, but that’s not a mandate. So that’s a lot of information.
VANNOY:
There’s lot to unpack there. Good. So in the past you didn’t have to keep the identification, so you didn’t have to keep the copy of my passport or my driver’s license or my whatever I used for a valid identification. How did, in an audit situation, how would ICE know that you properly verify identification? Or is it simply just having it in the I nine alone was enough.
SIMMONS:
Having it in the I nine alone was enough. Now I have many employers who do keep the identification, so that’s fine. Also, what I say to employers is either way, again, you just have to be consistent, keep the forms or for everybody or don’t keep the forms. But in my mind, whether you’re keeping that identification, a copy of that identification hard copy, which let’s face it storage wise, et cetera, that can be a little cumbersome or you’re keeping it electronic. Now you have a little bit of a security thing. If you were breached either way security wise and somebody got a hold of those identification for your employees, you’re going to be liable to an extent. So I’ve never kept the identification, but if you’re part of this pilot program for verifying remote authorization, you have to keep those forms and that kind of makes sense, right? Because they’re doing it remotely.
VANNOY:
So I think that’s a really important clarification. We need to pound home here that, so in the past, and I’m not a lawyer, neither are you, but a lawyer would probably advise you keep as little documentation as is required by law so that you would pass an audit. But like you said, if I’m keeping copies of social security cards and passports and driver’s license and I’m thinking, well, it’s just digital, it’s just in some shared folder. Well, if that ever got hacked, now all of a sudden you got exposure for personal identity out there. So a lawyer would probably advise, keep as little as possible in the old world. But for remote employees, if you’re going to do this, and this is correct me if I’m wrong, this is if you’re not using E-Verify, if you’re going to use the new pilot verifying the identity of a remote employee, not identity, but the verifying their eligibility to work, then you must keep that form of id,
SIMMONS:
Correct. So that pilot program comes with a couple of additional requirements. And again, D H SS is pretty transparent and they’re saying, we’re going to collect data during this pilot program to see are there more errors when we’re verifying remotely or is there the same amount? And my guess is look, my guess is that E-Verify is going to be mandated for all employers in the near future. I’ve been saying that for years, and now that you see 20 states have already adopted it as mandatory, I think they know it’s coming. But for this pilot program, I think they want to just see how does this work for remote employees and can we get a comfort level that verifying remotely, but using E-Verify, we don’t have a lot of errors and that makes sense to me.
VANNOY:
Yeah, this is a common theme we’re seeing in what I would say the broader HR compliance landscape, whether it’s F L S A rules. So there’s obviously federal F L S A rules around minimum wage and overtime, but increasingly more and more states and even local jurisdictions have their own versions of these laws. You’re roughly half the states mandate either by now. I just can’t imagine that this slows down. I see this continuing to accelerate. To me, the only questions I would have is when is it mandatory by all states and do we ever get to a single national standard? I don’t know if that will happen. I think the national standard is the I requirement of E-Verify different states. Everybody has their own way of doing, just like to your example, maybe they only want to require it for say, these industries or employers of X size. Right?
SIMMONS:
I agree. I agree. One more change, Mike, that I want to mention. On the new form they added to the section, which is section where they list the acceptable documents, I thought that this was really good. They added acceptable receipts. So what those receipts may be that I lost my license, but here’s a copy from D M V Department of Motor Vehicle that says I’ve applied for my new license. There are some, and that’s just an example. There are some acceptable receipts that a potential employee can give to allow them to start work, but you have to let go of them if that license never materializes or whatever they got the receipt for. So they did change besides changing the form itself, they changed some of the description for the identification they can take. They added a section for people who are under the age of 18, what can they present, right? Because they’re not going to have the same identification maybe that you or I have. And they added acceptable receipts like I lost something, but I did apply for a replacement of that lost or stolen identification. So they did add to the instructions as well as the form was changed.
VANNOY:
So Mary, I think I just want to make sure we’re crystal clear on the new pilot for non e-verify remote verification,
SIMMONS:
Correct
VANNOY:
Versus just using E-Verify. Prior to this rule change, could I hire remote employees and simply use E-Verify or go ahead.
SIMMONS:
You could, but because if you remember, the remote verification kept getting extended and it just ended your ability as an employer to verify remote employees identification and authorization to work in the United States just expired. And there was all kinds of rules around that. So that just expired. Now, prior to the pandemic, there was no for approving remote work. You could get that done by a notary get authorization, but there was really no ice was silent on verifying remote employees. I will tell you that some of my employers would have their new hires fly in to the closest office or drive to the closest office to show their identification pandemic change, that they did come out with some rules and regulations. This is how you verify remote employees. But they said, Mike, when these regulations are over, you need to see that authorization identification in person. So they weren’t saying forever, that’s okay, that person’s authorized. They were saying eventually you have to see the identification. What they’re saying now is completely different. They’re saying on a pilot program process, you can verify remote employees, whether you’re using E-Verify for everybody or you only want to use it for your remote employees for this period, we’re going to allow you to do that. But we’re not saying it’s a permanent process. It’s a pilot.
VANNOY:
Got it.
SIMMONS:
Got it. Okay. So that’s given them the ability to wheel it back in case when they do all their data collection, they find, wait a minute, there was too many errors, not seeing that identification in person. It makes sense to me,
VANNOY:
And I’m trying to get to the distinction between E-Verify and the new pilot because the pandemic rule is now expired. This isn’t as simple as I can simply now use. Oh, I don’t need to be part of this pilot program. I’ll just use E-Verify and therefore I don’t have to do file the same steps for verification or do I have that wrong?
SIMMONS:
No, you’re a hundred percent right, and thank you for making that distinction. You need to be part of this pilot program. And because they’re only going to allow you to do this as part of the pilot program, if you’re giving them the reporting, they’re going to ask you, how many people did you hire remotely? They’re going to ask you to fill out a report, right? So that’s going to be a link when you go to the e-verify site that we are going to give the link to everybody on this that listens to the webinar, we’re going to make that available. So when you go to the e-Verify site, you’ll be able to sign up for that pilot program. Just because you’re using E-Verify does not mean that you can now verify everybody’s employment remotely.
VANNOY:
And to me, that’s the big thing that we got to get really clear here. I think, and I’ll generally almost always err on the side of the small business employer makes mistakes accidentally. It’s almost never on purpose. This is an area where man, for the last few years here, oh, remote employee. Oh yeah, I’ll just, I’m exempt. Or maybe you didn’t know you were doing it wrong the whole time. You just happened to never get caught. You have to follow the rules here in simply using E-Verify does not exempt you from properly verifying the eligibility to work, not citizenship eligibility to work of an employee remotely. Is that
SIMMONS:
Right? Correct.
VANNOY:
Okay. And so I’ll double down on what you said, whether you watch this live, we’ll send it in the follow-up. If you watch it from our website, you’ll see online or however you consume this as a podcast, read YouTube or whatever. We’ll have in the show notes, we’ll have links to the new I nine. We’ll have link to two other webinars, one where you and I spent a full hour just unpacking what the I nine is why it’s so important. Another one just on e-verify that we did the same and then a link to the site where people can enroll into the pilot program. So we’ll include that for everybody.
SIMMONS:
Perfect.
VANNOY:
Okay. I do want to talk, I don’t want to unnecessarily scare people, but I want people to understand the consequences of getting this wrong. So I want to talk penalties. Is there anything else that you think everybody needs to know about what the I nine is, what the changes are, what’s required? Forget newness,
SIMMONS:
This is a
VANNOY:
New world going forward. What do people need to do when they hire remote employees as it relates to I nine?
SIMMONS:
I would say two things that I want to make everybody aware of. Number one, this in my mind would be a really good time to do an I nine audit. And I just want to be clear, you don’t have to go back to all of your current employees and have them fill out this new form. It’s only for people that you hire from this point going forward. Or to be perfectly clear, from October 31st, 2023 going forward, you have to use this new form. So don’t think you have to go back and use this new form for your employees that are already with you. So that’s one thing. The other thing is that I nine audit is very important. We do them all the time when I do them for an organization with just the business owner doing the I nines or their managers, or whether I do it for an organization that has a large HR staff that is doing I nines, I always, and I rarely say in hr, I rarely say always or never.
I’m going to say in my 30 year career, every HR I nine audit I’ve done, I’ve found errors. I just had an employer on the phone that said that. It’s kind of hard to believe, but they said, we need you to come in because our last two HR people, we had two HR people, they were filling out the I nine and then they were throwing it away. They did not keep a knee thing. So you might think you have HR professionals and they may think they know what they’re doing, but everybody’s human and everybody makes mistakes. So number one, I would do an I nine every year, at least every other year. And oh, by the way, and this is somebody other than the person filling out the I nines should be doing the audit. You can’t catch your own mistakes, right? Because you made that mistake probably unknowingly.
So that’s important. And the second thing that I would say, Mike, is you need to do a training, certainly because we have a new form, you need to do a training with whomever fills out the I nines. So that could be your HR staff, that could be remote managers. So we have a lot of chain franchises that we help. So they have a lot of little stores or food establishments, and those managers fill out the I nine mike. They have to get training. We need to give them the tools to do this, right? They don’t get the fine. We get the fine. So the organization gets the fine. So give them training on how to complete an I nine properly. The other thing you have to be careful of, Mike, is we don’t want to be discriminatory. So you got to be part of that training that we give is Mike, don’t take identification and say, I think this is wrong. I don’t think you’re really from the United States. This says your passport is a us. So we just have to train our managers to fill out those I nines and protect the organization as far as the fines go,
VANNOY:
Which is why you have to be all One of the standards in HR is if you do something for one person, you got to do it for everybody. Just be consistent, right? Because even if you don’t mean any harm, when you think immigration, you think ice, there’s instantly stereotypes pop in mind where a person of color that maybe is born in a different country could feel slighted. Maybe you are discriminating and maybe you’re not. But if they feel that you are and they report you, and then you get audited, you got to have it right for everybody. Otherwise, you’re subject to all kinds of things. Anywhere from E E O C claims to wrongful termination claims, to whatever the Pandora’s box just gets opened up. So the punchline is here, just be consistent. It’s not just do it right, but do it right the same way every time for everybody.
SIMMONS:
Agreed. And I’ll give you an example. One of the employers that we were assisting to get ready for an I nine audit, we noticed that they took three pieces of identification from a couple of candidates now employees, and they happened to be an organization that kept copies of that identification. That’s how I saw it, obviously. And I said, why did you take three pieces of identification from Michael? And the manager was like, I didn’t trust him. So that’s discriminatory, right? Right. So these agencies talk to each other, right? So later
VANNOY:
When you fire Michael, yeah. So later when you fire Michael, maybe for completely legitimate reasons, you have documentation where you have discriminated against Michael.
SIMMONS:
Exactly. Exactly. So you have to be careful about that and consistent. So the fines are real, right? And the fines will be for not completing the form properly, not retaining them properly, right? So three years or one year, three years from date of hire or one year after termination, whatever is longer is the retention. So you can’t just rip the form up after somebody leaves. There is a retention mandate. And so the fines for some of those things are a hundred dollars to 1100 per individual I nine. So maybe employers. And I’ve had employers say to me, nah, Mary, all right. I can afford that. Right? I’m not going to, I think you’re making too much out of this, but I will tell you, Mike, that employers that knowingly hire or knowingly continue to employ unauthorized workers, those are civil penalties. And those are two 50 to 11,000 per violation. And you might say to me, well, Mary, I feel like that word knowingly, which is stated twice on the ICE site. Well, the employer might go, oops, I didn’t know they were unauthorized. Well, if you didn’t do I nines, for any of your employees, that’s going to be a willful violation. They’re going to say you knew or should have known. Right? I always use the example you
VANNOY:
Intentionally didn’t know, right? Yes.
SIMMONS:
Right. And are, I’ve said it before, there are employers that we start to work with, and this is one of the things, we start with a handbook and move to an HR assessment. And I have had employers recently, Mike, I’m not talking years ago. I’m talking recently or like I nine, what’s an I nine? So companies have their head down trying to make money. Maybe they haven’t heard of an I nine. Maybe it’s a new business owner. There’s lots of reasons, but it will not be a defense. Ignorance is not a defense here. Those I nines have to be filled out for every single employee. And I think all the fines are bad. And I’ve talked about it on our other webinars. I have had employers go out of business because of these finds. They’re real.
VANNOY:
Yeah. This is one of those things. I think so many people, you hang out a shingle, you start out as a solopreneur, you’re grinding, your first employee might be a family member, then it’s a friend of the family, and then it’s a former colleague. And you find yourself running a business with five or more employees, and you’ve heard of the I nine. You assume that had to do with didn’t apply to you. Right? It is, I want to say maybe for people like us who live in this world every day, it’s shocking to us. I think it’s understandable how so many employers just don’t realize it. We are not making too big of a deal of this for no other reason. It’s not burdensome. This is easy. It’s simple. It’s a one page form. If they’re remote employees, you sign up on the website, we’ll give you the link. This is not hard. It’s just simply the law. In the same way, you’re not going to tell the officer or the judge, Hey, I didn’t know the speed limit change from 65 down to 45 as I crested the hill. You’re getting the ticket, right? I mean, ignorance of the law has no excuse here,
SIMMONS:
Right? Absolutely.
VANNOY:
Yeah. Okay. Mary, anything you want to say in closing?
SIMMONS:
I just think that this does, we always say that this is probably going to be one of the drier webinars that we give, but it is really important. There’s not a lot of federal laws out there or regulations that apply to every single employer. Even if you have one employee, this is one of them. Please follow it. Please call us if you have questions. It is simple, but it’s not to be ignored and not to be focused on. And you need to do an audit, and you need to do training.
VANNOY:
And you know what? We do our very best to make this show helpful and valuable information to share, whether you’re a customer of ours or not, whether we ever talk to you again. Hopefully you get value from this information. We’d also love to help. This is exactly what Mary and her team does, is they do these audits. They make sure that people get trained properly, that you stay compliant in these areas. So if we can help, by all means, we’d love to. So let us know. Mary, enjoy talking to you. As always, have a wonderful day and everyone else, we will talk to you next week. Thanks.