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.
Two very different obligations get filed under the same word, notice. 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 guide covers that second category only: which notices you owe, who gets each one, and what starts the clock on each deadline. 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.
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 a handful of people or hundreds. 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 are the notices side by side. 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, so whether they apply, and what they say, depends on the state where the employee works.
The Notices That Go Out When Somebody Starts
Two federal notices come with a new hire: 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 fourteen day figure comes from agency guidance rather than the statute, which requires the notice at the time of hiring. For 2014, the Department of Labor said a notice given within fourteen days of the start date would count as given on time, and that window is still the working deadline (Technical Release 2013-02).
The Marketplace notice gets missed because nothing punishes missing it. The obligation sits in the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Department of Labor says plainly that there is no fine or penalty for failing to provide it (coverage options notice FAQ).
For an employer the act covers, the Marketplace notice still goes to every employee you hire, including seasonal people who will never be eligible, and it is owed even when you offer 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. The continuation coverage rules require the general notice to reach the covered employee and the spouse within ninety days of coverage commencing (29 CFR 2590.606-1).
The accepted route is one first class mailing to the last known home address, addressed to both names. That works only while the address on file is current, which is the quiet way this notice fails in a business that never asks people to confirm their details.
| 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, a few 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 federal Medicare 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.
The notice 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 (Department of Labor notice, February 2010). 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. A gap of sixty-three days or more without creditable coverage after the initial enrollment period triggers a Medicare late enrollment penalty that most people pay for life.
The Part D notice duty 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, the simple route is to 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.
Where the Certificate of Creditable Coverage Fits
The certificate of creditable coverage is the one document in this area you no longer have to issue. Health plans once had to hand departing members written proof of prior coverage, so that a new plan could shorten or drop a preexisting condition exclusion. Federal rules ended that obligation as of December 31, 2014.
The exclusion it existed to defeat is gone, which is why the requirement went with it. Group health plans may no longer impose preexisting condition exclusions at all, and the federal portability rule at 45 CFR 146.115 now says outright that the rules for providing certificates of creditable coverage have been superseded by that prohibition.
The word creditable survives in a live obligation that has nothing to do with it, the Medicare Part D notice above, which concerns prescription drug coverage rather than proof of prior enrollment. The shared word is the whole reason the two get mixed up.
The practical version, when a departing employee or their next employer asks for one: send a short written statement of coverage dates drawn from your plan records or produced by the carrier. That is what a new plan or a Marketplace application is actually looking for, and it takes a minute rather than a form nobody publishes anymore.
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, many states run a continuation law of their own with its own notice rules, as the Department of Labor's COBRA guide notes. Working out which regime applies is a prerequisite rather than a detail.
Nick Anisimov, FirstHR founderThe 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 (SPD) is an ERISA document describing your whole plan, due within ninety days of somebody becoming a participant. The summary of benefits and coverage (SBC) 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 deadline has a second part: 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 for benefit cuts 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 (29 CFR 2520.104b-3). 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 a request from a participant or beneficiary (29 CFR 2590.715-2715).
The SBC's change rule is stricter. A material modification taking effect mid-year, outside a renewal, requires notice sixty days before it applies. Move a deductible on the first of July and that notice goes out by early May, or the change waits.
Often the insurer produces both documents, and that does not move the obligation. The plan administrator is the one who furnishes them, and that is usually the employer, so a document produced but never distributed is still a failure to furnish.
State New Hire and Leave Notices
The state layer of the new hire packet has no national rule behind it. 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 pay notice at hire, with a signed acknowledgment the employer keeps, in English and in the primary language the employee speaks where the state labor department publishes a translation.
The employer may use the state sample notice or its own, provided it carries all of the required information (New York State Department of Labor). The annual reissue New York once required is gone, so older checklists overstate what is owed there.
California requires the notice at hire for most non-exempt employees and again within seven days of a change, unless the change already appears on the next wage statement (California Labor Commissioner). 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.
Kelly KapoorCustomer ServiceUp to Date
Darryl PhilbinWarehouseNeeds Attention
Ryan HowardSalesUp to DateNotices 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 carry the tightest deadlines, and they bind private employers with fifty or more employees in twenty or more workweeks of the current or preceding calendar year (29 U.S.C. 2611).
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, absent extenuating circumstances (29 CFR 825.300).
The designation decision runs on the same clock. Once you have enough information to say whether the leave counts, a designation notice is due within another five business days, 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 it requires sixty days of advance written notice to affected employees and to named state and local officials (29 U.S.C. 2102).
State layoff laws are where that gap opens. Several set lower headcount thresholds or longer notice periods, so a layoff comfortably outside the federal rule can sit squarely inside a state one, and the state version usually carries its own form and its own list of officials to copy.
The unemployment notice is newer and less well known. A 2020 federal law, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, tied part of each state's emergency administrative grant to a requirement that employers notify separating workers about the availability of unemployment compensation, and many states now require it, usually through a specific form.
Several states applied the requirement to every separation rather than only involuntary ones. The notice 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 at the worksite and first class mail to the last known home address both meet 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 for whom access to the employer's electronic system is 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 (29 CFR 2520.104b-1).
Both doors carry the same conditions. Alert the recipient to the significance of the document, tell them they can get a paper version 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.
That record is one line per notice, added at the moment it goes out. The log below has a sheet for the event-driven notices and a second for the three that repeat every year, where the plan year date you enter sets the two deadlines you have to hit.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Date sent | Notice or document | Version or model form date | Recipient or recipients | Trigger event | Trigger date | Deadline | Method of delivery | Sent by | Proof stored where |
| 2 | Notice to Employees of Coverage Options | Replace with the employee name | New hire start date | Within 14 days of the start date | ||||||
| 3 | COBRA general notice | Employee and spouse | Group health coverage begins | Within 90 days of coverage starting | ||||||
| 4 | Summary plan description | Becoming a plan participant | Within 90 days of becoming a participant | |||||||
| 5 | Summary of benefits and coverage | Enrollment or a request | With enrollment materials, 7 business days on request | |||||||
| 6 | COBRA election notice | Qualifying event | 44 days from the event when self-administered | |||||||
| 7 | Medical leave eligibility and rights notice | Leave request | Within 5 business days | |||||||
| 8 | Medical leave designation notice | Enough information to classify the leave | Within 5 business days | |||||||
| 9 | State pay rate or wage notice | Hire, or a pay change | Set by the state | |||||||
| 10 | Unemployment insurance notice | Separation | At separation, where the state requires it | |||||||
| 11 | ||||||||||
| 12 | ||||||||||
| 13 |
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.
The first is assuming the posters cover it. 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.
The second is treating production as delivery. 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.
The third is skipping the Marketplace notice because no penalty attaches. 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.
The fourth is sending the COBRA general notice to the employee only. The spouse is a separate required recipient with independent election rights.
The fifth is running one packet for a multi-state workforce. Remote hiring made this the most common new failure mode I encounter, because the state layer follows the employee rather than the employer.
The sixth is letting the model documents go stale. 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, is owed to every new employee of an employer covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, whether or not they are eligible for your health plan and whether or not you offer one. The statute says at the time of hiring, and the Department of Labor has treated that as within fourteen days of the start date. 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?
It is due before the fifteenth of October each year, the day Medicare open enrollment opens. The duty falls on any employer whose group health plan includes prescription drug coverage, whatever its size and whether the plan is insured or self funded, and the notice goes to the Medicare eligible people the plan covers. Pinning down exactly who is Medicare eligible means asking personal questions, so the easier approach is a single annual mailing to everyone on the plan. Other moments call for the notice too: ahead of a person’s initial enrollment period for Part D, ahead of the date your coverage takes effect for someone Medicare eligible, when the coverage becomes or stops being creditable, and whenever someone asks for it. Separately, you report whether the coverage is creditable to the federal Medicare agency through an online form, 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 may face a state continuation law instead, since many states have their own.
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. If that act covers your business, 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. A 2020 federal law tied part of the emergency funding for state unemployment agencies to a state rule requiring employers to notify separating workers about the availability of unemployment compensation, and a substantial number of states now have one, usually satisfied by 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 generally owed when the separation ends coverage under a plan federal COBRA reaches, 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 under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the test is delivery reasonably calculated to ensure actual receipt, and a defined electronic safe harbor is deemed to pass that test. In broad terms, two groups are treated differently. Employees who use the employer’s electronic information system as an integral part of their jobs can simply be emailed. Everyone else must first agree to electronic delivery in a way that shows they can open the format, and they keep the right to withdraw that consent. For both groups, the message has to flag the significance of the document, offer a paper copy on request, and protect any confidential information. A document merely posted on an intranet or a benefits portal has not been delivered, and that gap is the most common reason a notice that was produced was never actually given.
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