Required Employee Notices: What You Must Send and When
The notices you have to hand or send to an individual employee, not pin to a wall: what each one is, who gets it, and when it is triggered.
Required Employee Notices
The documents you have to put into a named person’s hands rather than pin to a wall: the health plan notices, the ERISA documents, the two COBRA notices, the state notices that arrive with a new hire, and everything triggered by a leave request, a layoff, or a separation, each with its deadline attached
Two very different obligations get filed under the same word. One involves a wall, and it is the easy one. The other involves putting a specific document into a specific person's hands by a specific date, and it is the one that quietly goes wrong.
The difference is structural. A poster goes up once and its absence is visible to anyone walking past. A distributed notice fires on an event, and nothing tells you it was never sent. You find out when a former employee asks a question.
This is about that second category only. I build the people and records tooling for businesses without an HR department at FirstHR. This is general information rather than legal advice, and the state layer moves often enough to be worth checking against your own state.
What Counts as a Required Employee Notice
A required employee notice is a document the law obliges you to deliver to an individual, as opposed to display. Delivery is the obligation. A perfectly drafted notice sitting in a shared drive has not been given to anybody.
- •Go up once and stay up, where employees pass by.
- •Satisfied by display. Nobody has to receive anything.
- •Failure looks like a bare wall, so it is easy to spot.
- •Covered in the separate guide to workplace posters.
- •Fire on a trigger: a hire, a date, a coverage event, a separation.
- •Satisfied only by delivery to a named person, by a deadline.
- •Failure leaves no trace until somebody asks for the file.
- •The entire subject of this article.
Most of these obligations attach to a plan rather than to a headcount. Sponsor a group health plan and you have inherited a set of notices whether you employ six people or six hundred. The few rules that do turn on size are flagged where they come up.
Every Notice, Its Trigger, and Its Deadline
Almost every distributed notice fires on one of four triggers: a hire, a date on the calendar, a change in coverage or circumstances, or a separation. Sorting them that way is the difference between a list you read once and a process that runs.
Here is the full set. Read the trigger column first, because that is the column your business actually observes.
| Notice | Who receives it | Trigger | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notice to Employees of Coverage Options | Every employee, plan eligible or not | Hire | Within 14 days of the start date |
| Summary plan description | Each participant in an ERISA plan | Becoming a participant | 90 days after becoming a participant, or 120 days after a new plan takes effect |
| Summary of benefits and coverage | Eligible employees and enrollees | Enrollment, renewal, or a request | With enrollment materials, and within 7 business days of a request |
| Notice of a mid-year material modification | Group health plan enrollees | Change to plan terms outside renewal | At least 60 days before it takes effect |
| Summary of material modifications | Plan participants | Plan amendment | 210 days after the plan year in which it was adopted, or 60 days for a material benefit reduction |
| Employer CHIP notice | Employees living in a premium assistance state | Each plan year | Annually, before the plan year begins |
| Medicare Part D creditable coverage notice | Medicare eligible individuals on your drug plan | Each year and on coverage events | Before the 15th of October, plus at enrollment and on any change in status |
| Creditable coverage disclosure to the agency | The agency, not employees | Each plan year | Within 60 days after the plan year begins |
| COBRA general notice | Covered employee and spouse | Group health coverage begins | Within 90 days of coverage starting |
| COBRA election notice | Each qualified beneficiary | Qualifying event | 14 days after the administrator is notified, or 44 days from the event if self-administered |
| Medical leave eligibility and rights notice | Employee requesting leave | Leave request or a known qualifying reason | Within 5 business days |
| Medical leave designation notice | The same employee | Enough information to classify the leave | Within 5 business days |
| Layoff or closing notice | Affected employees and named officials | Mass layoff or plant closing at a covered employer | 60 days before, longer in some states |
| State pay rate or wage notice | New hires where the state requires it | Hire, and often a pay change | At hire, with state-specific change rules |
| State paid leave and sick leave notices | Employees in states with programs | Hire, annually, or a leave event | Set entirely by the state |
| Unemployment insurance notice | The separating employee | Separation | At separation, where the state requires it |
The federal rows do not vary by where you sit. The bottom three are state law, and both their existence and their content follow the state the employee works in, which for a remote employee is their state rather than yours.
The Notices That Go Out When Somebody Starts
Two federal notices are triggered purely by hiring: the Marketplace coverage options notice within fourteen days of the start date, and the COBRA general notice within ninety days of group health coverage beginning. Everything else in the packet comes from the plan you sponsor or the state the person works in.
The Marketplace notice gets missed because nothing punishes missing it. The obligation sits in the Fair Labor Standards Act, no penalty was ever attached, and the model document is two pages. It still applies to every employee you hire, including seasonal people who will never be eligible, and to employers with no health plan at all.
The COBRA general notice is the opposite case: easy to remember, easy to get subtly wrong, because it has two recipients. Employee and spouse both have to receive it, and the accepted route is one first class mailing to the last known home address addressed to both. That only works if the address on file is current.
| Notice in the new hire packet | Source of the requirement | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Notice to Employees of Coverage Options | Affordable Care Act, through the Fair Labor Standards Act | Within 14 days of the start date, to every employee |
| COBRA general notice | Continuation coverage rules under ERISA | Within 90 days of coverage starting, to employee and spouse |
| Summary plan description | ERISA disclosure rules | Within 90 days of becoming a plan participant |
| Summary of benefits and coverage | Affordable Care Act | With enrollment materials, before the enrollment decision |
| Special enrollment rights notice | Health insurance portability rules | At or before the time coverage is offered |
| State pay rate or wage notice | State wage payment law | At hire, where the state requires one |
| State paid leave program notice | State leave statutes | At hire, where the state runs a program |
Fold these into the packet you already assemble. If you have a working process for new hire paperwork, four more documents cost nothing. If you do not, no reminder will save you, because the notices get forgotten in the same week the tax forms do.
The Annual Health Plan Notices You Owe Every Year
Three obligations repeat on a calendar rather than an event: the CHIP notice before each plan year begins, the Medicare Part D creditable coverage notice before the fifteenth of October, and the creditable coverage disclosure to the agency within sixty days of the plan year starting. The first two go to employees. The third does not.
The CHIP notice tells employees their state may help pay their share of your premiums through Medicaid or the children's health insurance program, and that qualifying opens a special enrollment window in your plan. It follows the employee's state of residence rather than your business address, so one remote worker in a participating state creates the obligation for a business headquartered somewhere without a program. The model version is updated as state programs change, so last year's copy is usually not this year's (Department of Labor CHIPRA).
The Part D notice tells covered individuals whether your prescription drug coverage is creditable, meaning at least as good on average as the standard Part D benefit. Somebody who goes without creditable coverage and enrolls in Part D late pays a permanent premium penalty, so it matters to them personally. It attaches to any employer whose plan includes drug coverage, at any size, with no small plan exemption (creditable coverage guidance).
The October deadline exists because that is the day Medicare open enrollment opens, so the notice has to arrive while the decision is still ahead of the reader. Since you cannot identify who is Medicare eligible without asking questions you should not ask, most small employers send it to everyone covered and fold it into the benefits enrollment mailing.
The disclosure to the agency gets forgotten entirely, because it goes to a website rather than a person: a short online form declaring whether your drug coverage is creditable, due within sixty days after the plan year begins. For a calendar year plan, one form near the start of March.
The Two COBRA Notices
COBRA has a notice at the beginning of coverage and a notice at the end of it. The general notice is due within ninety days of coverage starting. The election notice is due within fourteen days of the plan administrator learning of a qualifying event, which becomes forty-four days from the event itself when you are your own plan administrator.
Forty-four days is the figure that matters to a small business, because a small business usually is its own plan administrator. The employer has thirty days to notify the administrator and the administrator has fourteen to send the election notice, and when those are the same person the windows run consecutively from the event (29 U.S.C. 1166).
Two smaller notices complete the set. A notice of unavailability goes to somebody who requested continuation coverage they are not entitled to, within the same fourteen days. A notice of early termination goes out when coverage ends before the maximum period.
Federal COBRA generally reaches employers with twenty or more employees. Below that, most states run a continuation law of their own with its own notice rules. Working out which regime applies is a prerequisite rather than a detail.
The Summary Plan Description and the Summary of Benefits and Coverage
These are two documents under two different laws and they are constantly confused. The summary plan description is an ERISA document describing your whole plan, due within ninety days of somebody becoming a participant. The summary of benefits and coverage is an Affordable Care Act document in a fixed short format, due with enrollment materials and within seven business days of a request.
The SPD timing has a second limb: for a newly established plan the deadline is a hundred and twenty days after the plan becomes subject to the disclosure rules, and the administrator may use whichever date falls later. An updated SPD then has to be reissued every five years if the plan has been amended, and every ten years regardless (29 CFR 2520.104b-2).
Changes between reissues go out as a summary of material modifications, due two hundred and ten days after the close of the plan year in which the change was adopted. The exception is not generous: a material reduction in covered services or benefits under a group health plan has to be described within sixty days of adoption. Reductions move fast, improvements move slowly, and the asymmetry is deliberate.
The SBC runs on a different clock: with enrollment materials, no later than thirty days before an automatic renewal, and within seven business days of anybody asking. Its change rule is stricter. A material modification taking effect mid-year, outside a renewal, requires notice sixty days before it applies. Move a deductible in July and that notice goes out in April, or the change waits.
For most small employers the insurer produces both documents, and that does not move the obligation. The plan administrator furnishes them, the plan administrator is usually the employer, and a document produced but never distributed is still a failure to furnish.
State New Hire and Leave Notices
There is no national new hire notice rule. A meaningful number of states require a written pay rate notice at hire, several require notices about their paid leave or paid sick leave programs, and both content and timing are set state by state. Build the packet by work location rather than by company, and treat any national checklist as a prompt to check your own state.
The pattern is consistent even where the details are not. A wage notice typically states the rate or rates of pay and the basis on which they are paid, any overtime rate, allowances claimed against the minimum wage, the regular payday, and the employer's legal name plus any name it does business under. Some states also require a signed acknowledgment, a translation, or a fresh notice when pay changes.
Two examples show the range. New York requires a written notice at hire with a signed acknowledgment, in English and in the employee's primary language where a template exists; it once required an annual reissue and that requirement was later repealed, so older guidance overstates it. California requires the notice at hire and again within seven days of a change, unless the change already appears on the next wage statement. That is two states, and neither tells you what a third one does.
The leave layer works the same way. States running paid family and medical leave programs generally require a notice at hire and another when leave is requested. States with paid sick leave statutes generally require written notice of accrual and rights.
Your federal layer is identical everywhere; your state layer follows each person's work state, which for a remote employee is where they sit. A business with people in four states runs four packets.
Notices Triggered by a Leave Request, a Layoff, or a Separation
Four events reliably generate notices: a request for leave that might qualify under the federal medical leave law, a qualifying event that ends health coverage, a mass layoff or closing, and any separation in a state requiring an unemployment notice. Each has a short window and none can be caught up on later.
The medical leave notices are the tightest. When an employee requests leave, or you learn an absence might qualify, an eligibility notice and a rights and responsibilities notice are due within five business days. Once you can decide whether the leave counts, a designation notice is due within another five. That is one working week, which means these have to be templates somebody sends rather than documents somebody drafts.
The layoff notice has the largest gap between federal and state law. The federal closing and mass layoff statute reaches employers with a hundred or more employees and requires sixty days of advance written notice to affected employees and to named state and local officials. Several states set lower thresholds or longer periods, so a layoff comfortably outside the federal rule can sit squarely inside a state one.
The unemployment notice is newer and less well known. Federal guidance pushed states to require employers to notify separating workers about the availability of unemployment compensation, and many now do, usually through a specific form. Several applied it to every separation rather than only involuntary ones. It belongs beside the final paycheck on the employee termination checklist.
How to Deliver a Notice So It Actually Counts
For the benefits notices, the standard is delivery reasonably calculated to ensure actual receipt. Hand delivery and first class mail to the last known home address always satisfy it. Email satisfies it only under specific conditions, and posting a document somewhere an employee could find it satisfies it never.
The electronic route has two doors. The first covers employees with work-related computer access as an integral part of their duties, who can be emailed without asking permission. The second covers everybody else and requires affirmative consent, given in a way that reasonably demonstrates the person can access the format, with a right to withdraw it.
Both doors carry the same conditions. Alert the recipient to the significance of the document, tell them a paper copy is free on request, take reasonable steps to confirm delivery happened, and protect any confidential information.
Keep the proof with the plan records rather than the employee file, because that is where an auditor looks: document version, recipient list, date, method. Nobody reconstructs that two years later, and in practice the absence of a record is treated much like the absence of a notice.
Turning All of This Into a Calendar You Can Run
The goal is not a document listing your obligations. It is a set of triggers attached to things your business already does, so nobody has to remember anything.
Fold the annual dates into whatever schedule you already keep. If you do not keep one, the HR compliance calendar is the natural home for the three recurring items.
Where Small Employers Get This Wrong
Six patterns, and the first two account for most of what I see.
Assuming the posters cover it is first. A current poster board and no distributed notice process means the visible half of the problem is solved and the half with individual recipients and deadlines is untouched.
Treating production as delivery is second. The insurer produced the summary of benefits and coverage, the broker produced the summary plan description, and neither furnished anything to anyone. The plan administrator furnishes documents, and that is usually you.
Skipping the Marketplace notice because no penalty attaches is third. That is a defensible risk assessment right up to the moment somebody asks whether you comply, and the honest answer is that you decided not to.
Sending the COBRA general notice to the employee only is fourth. The spouse is a separate required recipient with independent election rights.
Running one packet for a multi-state workforce is fifth. Remote hiring made this the most common new failure mode I encounter, because the state layer follows the employee rather than the employer.
Letting the model documents go stale is sixth. The CHIP model notice changes as state programs change, state wage templates get revised, and the medical leave forms are reissued. An annual pass over the templates, alongside the employee handbook review, closes it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are required employee notices?
They are documents that federal or state law obliges an employer to deliver to individual employees, as opposed to the posters it obliges you to display. The distributed set includes the Marketplace coverage options notice for new hires, the summary plan description and summary of benefits and coverage for plan participants, the annual CHIP and Medicare Part D creditable coverage notices, both COBRA notices, the pay rate and leave notices several states require at hire, the medical leave notices triggered by a leave request, layoff notices, and unemployment insurance notices at separation. The defining feature is that display satisfies none of them. Each has a named recipient and a deadline, and the obligation is met only when the document reaches that person.
Which notices does a new employee have to receive?
Federally, two are tied directly to hiring. The Notice to Employees of Coverage Options, usually called the Marketplace or exchange notice, must go to every new employee within fourteen days of the start date, whether or not they are eligible for your health plan and whether or not you offer one. The COBRA general notice must reach the employee and their spouse within ninety days of group health coverage beginning. Alongside those, plan participants are owed a summary plan description within ninety days of becoming a participant and a summary of benefits and coverage with their enrollment materials. On top of the federal layer, a number of states require a written pay rate notice at hire, and several require notices about state paid leave or paid sick leave programs. The state layer follows the state the employee works in.
When is the Medicare Part D creditable coverage notice due?
Before the fifteenth of October each year, which is the day Medicare open enrollment opens. It applies to any employer whose group health plan includes prescription drug coverage, at any size, insured or self funded, and it goes to Medicare eligible individuals covered by the plan. Because you cannot reliably identify who is Medicare eligible without asking questions you would rather not ask, most employers send it to the whole covered population and treat it as one annual mailing. The notice is also required at other times: before an individual’s initial enrollment period for Part D, before your coverage takes effect for a Medicare eligible person, whenever the coverage stops or starts being creditable, and on request. A separate disclosure of creditable status goes to the agency online, not to employees, within sixty days after the plan year begins.
What is the CHIP notice and who has to send it?
It tells employees that their state may help pay their share of employer coverage premiums through Medicaid or the children’s health insurance program, and that qualifying for that help opens a special enrollment window in your plan. The requirement comes from the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act and applies to any employer maintaining a group health plan that covers participants living in a state offering premium assistance. It follows the employee’s state of residence rather than your own, so a business in a state with no program still owes the notice if one employee lives across a line in a state that has one. It is due annually, before the start of each plan year, and the Department of Labor publishes a model version that it updates as state programs change.
How many COBRA notices are there and when are they due?
Two matter most. The general notice, sometimes called the initial notice, is due within ninety days of group health coverage beginning, and it goes to the covered employee and to their spouse. The election notice is due after a qualifying event: the employer notifies the plan administrator within thirty days of the event, and the administrator sends the election notice within fourteen days of being notified. A small employer that administers its own plan collapses both windows into forty-four days from the qualifying event. Two lesser notices exist as well, a notice of unavailability when somebody requests continuation coverage they are not entitled to, and a notice of early termination when coverage ends before the maximum period. Federal COBRA generally applies at twenty or more employees, and smaller employers usually face a state continuation law instead.
Is the exchange or Marketplace notice still required?
Yes. The obligation sits in the Fair Labor Standards Act rather than in the tax code, and nothing has removed it. Every new employee must receive written notice of the existence of the health insurance Marketplace, the services it offers, the fact that a premium tax credit may be available if your coverage is unaffordable or fails to provide minimum value, and the fact that buying Marketplace coverage means giving up any employer contribution and the tax treatment that comes with employer coverage. It applies whether or not you sponsor a plan, and to part time and seasonal employees who will never be eligible for one. The Department of Labor publishes two model versions, one for employers who offer coverage and one for employers who do not. No specific penalty attaches to missing it, which is exactly why it is the notice small employers skip.
Do I have to give a written notice when somebody leaves?
Often, and it depends on the state. Federal guidance issued to state unemployment agencies pushed states to require employers to notify separating workers about the availability of unemployment compensation, and a substantial number now do, usually through a specific state form or pamphlet handed over at separation. Several states applied the requirement to every separation, including resignations, rather than only to layoffs. Separately, a COBRA election notice is owed whenever the separation ends group health coverage, a federal or state layoff notice may be owed sixty days ahead for a closing or mass layoff, and some states require a written statement about the effect of separation on benefits. Check your own state, because this is the area with the widest variation and the least federal structure.
Can I send required notices by email?
Sometimes, and the conditions matter more than the convenience. For notices governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, delivery must be reasonably calculated to ensure actual receipt, and electronic delivery meets that standard only under a defined safe harbor. In broad terms, you can email employees who have work-related computer access as an integral part of their job, and everybody else only after they affirmatively consent in a way that demonstrates they can access the format. You also have to flag the significance of the document, tell recipients a paper copy is available at no charge, and protect any confidential information. Posting a document on an intranet or a benefits portal and waiting for people to find it is not delivery, and it is the most common way a notice that was produced was never actually given.