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Employee handbooks should be reviewed at least once per year to keep up with current legislation. For Illinois Employers, here are the top handbook updates effective January 2023 that every employer in IL should be updating:

1. Update your bereavement leave policy. Illinois employers with more than 50 employees may need to update their bereavement leave. Illinois employers covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) must allow employees to use up to 2 weeks (10 workdays) of unpaid leave for bereavement leave of any covered family member.?

The new act allows for ten days of unpaid bereavement leave for these additional family members:?

• Stepchildren?
• Stepparents?
• Spouse?
• Domestic partner?
• Sibling?
• Parent?
• Mother or father-in-law?
• Grandchildren?
• Grandparents??

The reasons for taking bereavement leave were expanded to include absence due to (i) miscarriage; (ii) unsuccessful assisted reproductive technology or insemination procedure, (iii) failed adoption, (iv) failed surrogacy, (v) negative fertility diagnosis, or (vi) stillbirth. This is a material departure from the previous Illinois law which only required employers to provide unpaid leave to grieve the death of a child.?Employers can review the Illinois Bereavement Leave Act for more information.

1. Update your meal break policy.?The amendment to ODRISA also requires Illinois employers to provide a second unpaid 20 minute meal break to employees that work a 12 hour shift to take place during the last 4.5 hours of the shift. Employers should take note that if meal breaks provided to employees are?unpaid, then the breaks must be increased to 30 minutes in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or the employer risks accusation that the break is a “rest period” instead of a meal break.
2. Update your discrimination policy and dress code policy. Effective as of January 1, 2023, Illinois law expands the definition of “race” to fight unlawful discrimination so that discrimination based on race also prohibits discrimination based on “traits associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protected hairstyles such as braids, locks and twists” (emphasis added).?Similarly, employee dress code and grooming policies cannot prohibit such hair styles. For more information, Illinois employers can review the CROWN Act (Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair Act).
3. Update your schedule policies. Under the One Day Rest in Seven (ODRISA) Act, Illinois employers must already provide 24 hours off for employees that work 6 consecutive days in a?calendar week. However, this was updated to replace the words “calendar week” with “seven-day period”. This subtle change means that ODRISA applies to any employee working 6 consecutive days regardless of whether they fall within a traditional Sunday to Saturday calendar. This new amendment will not apply to part-time employees working 20 hours or less weekly. It will also not apply to executives, outside salespeople, or administrative staff.??

• Additional note: Required meal periods:?The current version of ODRISA requires that employers must provide their employees with a mandatory meal period. The rule states that for every 7.5 hours an Illinois employee is working, they must have a mandatory 20-minute meal period. The mandatory meal period must be taken at most five hours into the employee's shift. When the new rule takes effect on the first of the year, employers will be required by the law to provide an additional 20-minute meal period for each additional 4.5 hours worked. For example, if you work a 12 hours shift, your employer must give you two 20-minute meal breaks during your shift.

2023 also marks employers’ new reporting obligations to the Illinois Department of Labor. The requirements, originating from a March 2021 amendment to the Illinois Equal Pay Act of 2003 (the “Act”), require private businesses with 100 or more employees in Illinois, that are required to file an EEO-1 report with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to report certain employee payroll and diversity information to the IDOL, including new pay data reporting and certification requirements, among others.

Additionally, beginning on January 1, 2023, covered Illinois employers?need to include in annual corporate reports filed with the Illinois Secretary of State gender, race and ethnicity employment data, similar to the information contained in Section D of the EEO-1 document. The Secretary of State will publish the data of each corporation’s employees on its official website within 90 days of receipt of a properly filed annual report.

If you have questions on anything listed, let me know how myself or the HRA of Greater Oak Brook SHRM can help you.