Are you required to let employees vote?

All right, so it's that time. We're going to start to face the question. It's going to be coming in from most employers, and that's, am I required to pay my folks time off for them to go vote, or even should I give my folks paid time off to go vote? They're two, obviously two very different questions. So most folks are unaware of state voting laws. So most states require that employers provide at least a few hours off for their employees to vote. And many of those states require that at least some of that time off be paid. Uh, the advance notice may be required from employees. Is often kind of minimal, so you might want to be prepared if you're in a state that does have paid-off time for employees to have some last-minute requests for people to go and vote, which is totally fine. And that's the one thing that we want to emphasize here is the process and that we want to encourage our employees to go vote. It's something that we can do and really rally behind as employers and a way that we can encourage folks regardless of our beliefs and, you know, trying to negate some of the political tension from this year by being encouraging to our teammates. So California and New York also require a notice about employees' voting rights be posted in a conspicuous location. Employees who are working from home or who do not report to the workplace should, should be provided with these notices electronically. So if you have questions related to your specific state, put it in the comments, and I'll answer it. But I know we're in South Carolina, many of our clients are in South Carolina, employers in South Carolina are not required to provide employees with leave to to vote. It doesn't mean that you can't or you shouldn't, but you're not required to. And so also one other thing to consider is that employers in states with early voting may want to encourage employees to take advantage of that option by offering the same time-off benefit to reduce the number of absences on Election Day. So then you don't have a logjam of everybody leaving on Election Day. You can encourage folks to vote early and give them the same paid-off option. So the availability of early voting and absentee balances does not change an employee's right to vote on Election Day. If that is their preference. So you can't force anybody to do it prior to the actual Election Day. So once again, if you have any questions about your state specifically, as this does vary state by state, happy to answer. Pop your question in the comments, your state. Thank you so much for checking this out. Make sure you subscribe, check out our other videos. We appreciate you coming by.