Labor laws and Staying Compliant with Jocelyn King, VirgilHR

The guest this time is Jocelyn King, CEO and Founder of VirgilHR, a SaaS solution that empowers HR professionals to make smart, compliant employment and labor law decisions in real time. 

HR has been the passion and focus of Jocelyn’s entire career as she’s supported high-growth technology start-ups and public companies throughout her tenure. She defines herself as a true HR generalist and has touched on all aspects of HR in her senior roles.

Jocelyn has strong expertise in creating and executing HR strategy, managing employee relations for multi-state and global organizations, developing a diverse and high-performing work culture, owning organization development and change management, and crafting the total reward, talent development, and talent acquisition strategies.

Questions for Jocelyn include: 

• What unique challenges do HR professionals face when it comes to staying compliant with employment and labor laws, and how does VirgilHR address these issues differently from traditional methods?
• With the thousands of federal, state, and local laws constantly evolving, how does VirgilHR ensure that its platform remains up-to-date and accurate in real time?
• Any big compliance changes HR pros in the US can expect in the next 3-6 months? 
• One key area for compliance is leave management and wage and hour laws. In one minute or less, how does VirgilHR support HR teams in navigating these complex areas?
• 1 in 10 employers is sued every year by their employees and US employers spend over $14B a year on outside legal counsel. How does VirgilHR’s solution reduce risk and liability for organizations, and what kind of feedback have you received from clients regarding reduced legal costs or avoided settlements?
• What advice would you give to HR leaders who are overwhelmed with compliance challenges? 

 
We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.

Chapters

• 0:03 HR Compliance Challenges With Virgil HR
• 14:57 Navigating HR Compliance Challenges Strategically
• 18:37 Connecting With Virgil HR Online

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom and visit HRGazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:29

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, bill Bannon, and joining me on this episode is Jocelyn King, ceo and founder over at Virgil HR, a SaaS solution that empowers HR professionals to make smart, compliant employment and labour law decisions in real time. Hr has been the passion and focus of Jocelyn's entire career, as she supported high growth technology startups and public companies throughout her tenure. She defines herself as a true HR generalist and has touched on all aspects of HR in her senior roles. Jocelyn, welcome to the show today. How are you doing?

Speaker 3: 1:08

Hi Bill, thank you so much for having me. I'm good, thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:12

So let's get into it then, because I've got loads of questions for you today. Firstly, can you tell me about the origin story of Virgil HR and what inspired you and your team to develop an automated compliance solution for HR teams?

Speaker 3: 1:26

Sure, I've been an HR professional my entire career.

Speaker 3: 1:30

I started in human resources really straight out of college, worked predominantly for high growth technology companies and, being high growth, we were hiring in a lot of states very quickly.

Speaker 3: 1:40

And I was working for a actually UK based company a few years ago in the tech space and we were expanding into North America and it was so hard tracking and complying with employment and labor laws, particularly at the state and local level here in the US, and so we were going on Google and we're Googling what are the maternity leave requirements in California, and we go down a rabbit hole for three hours or what are the termination requirements and final wage requirements in Washington state, and it was really burdensome doing the research on our own and it left us also feeling a little unsettled that ultimately we were the ones making these decisions and weren't necessarily lawyers.

Speaker 3: 2:20

So sometimes we'd speak to lawyers too, but it was expensive and not very sustainable. So, having worked in tech most of my career, I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of engineering leaders and have worked alongside them on performance management and talent development of their own engineering workforce and had a pretty good understanding of the way things worked, decided, you know, after a few iterations of being in a role where I was experiencing the same problem over and over again, to quit my job about three years ago and start virtual HR for HR.

Speaker 4: 2:54

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at h HRGazettecom. And now back to the show.

Speaker 2: 3:10

Okay, wonderful, thank you very much. So what unique challenges, jocelyn, do HR pros face when it comes to staying in compliance with employment and labor laws, and how does Virgil HR address those issues differently from traditional methods? What set you, you guys, apart from from others out there?

Speaker 3: 3:30

yeah. So I mean. The unique challenges here in the US in particular because that's what we're focused on today is is that these laws are changing all the time and there are thousands of them, and you have to follow federal law and you have to follow state law and you have to follow city law and county law and they supersede each other, so county law might give an employee greater benefits than a federal law does, so you have to know which laws to follow, and it's very complicated. Nobody knows all of them, and to expect an HR professional to be a legal professional in that situation really isn't very fair, and so it creates a lot of stress, a lot of time. That goes into it as well, and that time really takes away from being able to focus on other strategic areas of the business.

Speaker 3: 4:19

So where we come in is unlike other incumbents out there that might offer more of like a content library for you to research. We actually use software to eliminate the need for you to have to do any research. So if you have that employee in California who's requested maternity leave, rather than going on Google or going into a content library and trying to research what laws apply, our software will directly analyze what federal, state and local employment and labor laws apply to that specific employee. And since we've identified what laws are applicable, we can then give you very prescriptive, step-by-step legal guidance on everything you need to do as HR to be compliant All the forms, all the notices, the third-party state agencies you have to refer an employee to. That takes a tremendous amount of research and that's something that we do in a matter of a minute or two for you.

Speaker 2: 5:10

Okay. So a quick follow-up to that one, I guess, is how. What I mean by that is yeah. With the thousands of federal, state and local laws constantly evolving, how does Virgil HR ensure that its platform remains up-to to date and accurate in real time? Tell us a bit more about what's happening under the bullet.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Yeah, so it's a mixture of technology and people really. So we have a legal team internally that uses different types of technologies and databases and will even go out and make calls to local legislators to ask questions to ensure that our database is not only fully compliant but that, as these laws are changing which we've talked about, are changing all the time that we are consistently reviewing on a day-to-day basis those changes and making the necessary changes in our system so that the output is reflected appropriately to our customers system, so that the output is reflected appropriately to our customers.

Speaker 2: 6:05

Any big compliance related changes that folks can expect over the next three to six months. Anything you want to flag there.

Speaker 3: 6:17

Yes, we have a variety of laws that are going to be going into effect in January. We're actually doing a webinar in December to talk all about these 2025 legislative changes that are occurring. Illinois has been incredibly active. They have their new job pay transparency bill that passed. That goes into effect January 1st. Washington state has made some amendments to their paid sick leave law. Oregon's made changes to their paid family leave act and a reminder that the Department of Labor has increased again its salary threshold for white-collar exemptions. That second level now hits in January, so for those who might be impacted, you would definitely want to take a look at that. New York passes paid prenatal personal leave. Connecticut expands their paid sick leave law. So a lot of change is occurring, particularly in the leave law realm or the wage and hour. Those seem to be the two most active areas and I think that we'll see more and more of that over time.

Speaker 2: 7:22

Okay, helping you guys deliver all of your core services is your very clever chatbot. Of course, in 90 seconds or less, can you talk about how Virgil HR's chatbot works?

Speaker 3: 7:36

Sure, it works in two different ways. We have a web-based application where you can log into our site and use our chatbot there directly, or we integrate into HRISs, like you know, your HRIS of the world that you can imagine that you're using on a day-to-day basis. Our chatbot will ask diagnostic questions about a scenario you're working on. So let's say it's an integration. Our chatbot is silently following you, the HR user, around and as you're about to make a decision that has a legal consequence, like a termination or a pay change or a leave request, our chatbot pops up. It pulls data about the employee from the system, analyzes what federal, state and local employment and labor laws apply to that employee and then provides the prescriptive guidance to the user. So it's very proactive. It's more kind of on autopilot rather than that traditional reactive approach to compliance. You don't even have to know. A lot exists. Our chatbot is there to tell you.

Speaker 2: 8:32

Does your chatbot have a name? Often companies like to give these things names.

Speaker 3: 8:37

We did think about that. Actually we thought about personalizing the chatbot and decided our company is named after a person anyway. So we'll just keep everything as Virgil. We named the company after Virgil the poet because in Dante's Divine Comedies if you've ever read, maybe Dante's Inferno Virgil is this. I mean he's a real life person, but he's a character in the poem. Who's this guide and this beacon of wisdom and reason and kind of works walks Dante through hell into purgatory up to heaven, and we kind of saw that as a really funny way of being able to guide HR through some of these compliance nightmares that they go through okay, very good, thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 9:21

One key area for compliance is leave management and wage and our laws, of course. I'm going to shorten it in one minute or less. How does Virgil HR support HR teams in navigating those complex areas?

Speaker 3: 9:37

We do it in a number of ways, but if we were to just focus on the chatbot for a minute again, this example let's say that you're reviewing this maternity leave request in California. Our chat bot is automatically analyzing what laws apply and telling you what you need to do real time, so you don't have to do any of that research, for example. But there are other things that we do as well, like, for example, we have an employee and worker classification audit tool to help you determine whether a role should be exempt or non-exempt, or an employee versus a contractor, and we cover not just federal guidelines but state guidelines as well to help you stay compliant with those classification requirements too. Plenty of other areas of wage and hour that we cover meal and rest, break, overtime, payroll, frequency, terminations, final wages. The chatbot can help with all that. We do have other parts of our tool as well, like our multi-state comparison tool. That's also super helpful to our users.

Speaker 2: 10:33

Okay, thank you very much. So as part of my homework, I was all over your website ahead of this call. You've got some pretty startling stats on there. So, for example, one in 10 employers is sued every year by their employees, and US employers spend over $14 billion a year on outside legal counsel. That's staggering. How does Virgil HR's solution reduce risk and liability for organizations, and what kind of feedback have you received from clients regarding reduced legal costs or avoided settlements?

Speaker 3: 11:10

Sure, yeah. So it is pretty staggering, actually, how often employers are getting sued, and it doesn't really matter the size of your company either. Right, the average settlement award is a quarter million dollars. That puts some small companies out of business altogether, so it's really impactful. And so what we're doing is we are helping you, as an HR professional or even as a business owner, mitigate risk and liability by helping you do the right thing the first time around and helping to identify laws that are applicable to day to day situations. You're working on that you might not even be aware of, because, again, nobody can be an expert at all of this. It's just too much.

Speaker 3: 11:51

So what we've seen from our customers is they are here's a perfect example rather than going to an attorney and having them build out an entire employee handbook for their organization, they're using our employee handbook builder and saving several thousands of dollars, if not more, each year. By leveraging our employee handbook builder, by taking advantage of our chatbot and the proactive compliance advice that it provides, they are reducing their risk in doing the wrong thing. In one case in particular, we have somebody who was misclassifying employees. They identified it when they were going through our audit tool and reclassified appropriately and made the necessary changes to make up for it. Essentially, that is something that could have put them out of business if they hadn't figured it out. This is one person filing a claim and then kind of that that jar of worms opening from there.

Speaker 3: 12:52

So we're seeing a lot of avoided lawsuits. That's a little harder to measure, as you can imagine. Instead, what we're taking a look at is how are you getting sued before and how are you getting sued now? And is that too? And yes, there is, and that's really exciting and that cuts down in a lot of areas. It cuts down on legal costs and settlement awards and insurance costs, but also cuts down in time, because HR has to spend a ton of time on those lawsuits and it takes away from being able to do many other impactful things within your organization. So we're seeing really the reward across the board for our customers, which is really exciting. It isn't just mitigating risk, it isn't just controlling costs, it isn't just improving employer brand or retaining employer brand. It's also giving HR that freedom to do a little more movement than they previously could before in their role.

Speaker 2: 13:46

Data privacy, Jocelyn, is a big concern for lots of companies, of course. So for those companies worried about data privacy and security, how does your team and your tech manage sensitive information while providing that real-time compliance guidance?

Speaker 3: 14:03

Yeah, so there are a few things that we do. Of course, there are things on the back end that we're doing to remain compliant in the different types of data privacy requirements that we have to meet as an organization here in the US, but we're also anonymizing all the data, so we don't collect employee names, for example. We don't store that data either. So as a compliance company, we're very careful careful about risk, and the data privacy side of things is an area that we're extremely conscientious of. So going through the right audits is really important as a SAS provider that is in some way collecting personal and private information personal and private information but we're also very clear about the type of information we are storing and the type of information that we're gathering to ensure that everything is done safely jocelyn.

Speaker 2: 14:57

So far you've got all the right answers. Well done, you're being very compliant with your answers, jocelyn. Um, say what? What advice would you give to hr leaders? You know someone who's been an hr pro and now you're on the vendor side. What advice would you give to HR leaders? You know someone who's been an HR pro and now you're on the vendor side. What advice would you give to HR leaders who are overwhelmed with compliance challenges? If you're having a chit chat with someone and they're like I don't know where to start, what's the first bit of advice you'd give them?

Speaker 3: 15:21

The first advice that I would give is conducting some type of audit on your compliance practices within your organization. So taking a look at I mean even basic things. How are you handling worker authorization? How are you handling the documentation of I-9, the storage of I-9? Are you conducting I-9 audits in your workplace? What about classification? You know, I mean even looking at things like your pay equity practices, for example.

Speaker 3: 15:49

Do you have EPLI insurance? Because I've actually been very surprised in my career to have worked with a lot of companies that didn't early on, and that's really critical. So having EPLI insurance is really important. Do you have a handbook? How often are you reviewing your handbook? How often is it updated or is it getting acknowledged by employees?

Speaker 3: 16:07

There are so many things that you can take a look at and figure out. You know where's the low hanging fruit, things that I can improve very quickly and get a good bang for my buck, so to speak. But then where are other areas in my business that I really need to spend more time to clean up, and it might be that technology, in this case, could be a really helpful solution for you, in which case I'd encourage you to take a look at any type of technology provider out there, including virtual HR, that could assist with those types of compliance needs and figuring out where compliance sits in your overall HR strategy and making sure that it does sit within your HR strategy, because it shockingly gets overlooked a lot of the time.

Speaker 2: 16:51

Jocelyn, you're going to be sad when I tell you we are almost at the end of this particular conversation already. Well, bill, I could do this all day. Just a couple more questions for you before we do wrap up. You and I we spoke at HR Tech as we record this six or seven weeks ago, I guess. Now, tech as we recalled this six or seven weeks ago, I guess. Now, that's a great event. It was ironically given that the HR Chat Show is a top three HR tech podcast in the world based on downloads and whatnot. It was my first time at HR Tech in Vegas, but it will not be my last. I had a wonderful time. Beyond HR Tech, what other events do you guys like to attend or exhibit?

Speaker 3: 17:27

Where can we expect to see you in 2025? Yeah, absolutely. We'll be at transform in 2025 in march. Um, we love that event. It's a phenomenal event, incredibly, um progressive and forward thinking, um tracks that they talk about. So I really appreciate that conference quite a bit and would expect that any hr professional would. It's excellent. We'll also be at SHRM next year as well, and we always go to HR Tech. We love HR Tech, so we'll be there too. We like going to some regional events. We haven't decided yet where we'll be yet in 2025. But those three for sure we'll be attending and hopefully we have an opportunity to meet as many people as possible while we're there that's very interesting.

Speaker 2: 18:10

You mentioned transform. About an hour ago I interviewed enrique rubio, who heads up the transform community, and he's setting up chapters all around the world oh, that's fantastic.

Speaker 2: 18:19

That's, it's a, it's a wonderful organization it's a great organization and enrique is exactly the right guy for that, considering what what he did with Hacking HR. He was telling me on that interview that the Hacking HR community is at over 2 million professionals, which is just staggering. Jocelyn, before we wrap up for today, how can we connect with you If that's LinkedIn email? I bet you're super cool and all over TikTok and Instagram and places. And, of course, how can folks learn more about Virgil HR?

Speaker 3: 18:49

Absolutely Check us out at VirgilHRcom. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, and if you are super curious and you want to reach out and learn more, feel free to email me at jking at VirgilHRcom.

Speaker 2: 19:05

Excellent. Well, that just leads me to say for today, thank you very much for being my guest.

Speaker 1: 19:11

Oh thank you very much for having me. Bill. Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom.