Not a list of laws. A list of the places where Texas employers actually get hurt — organized so you can walk your own operation, section by section, and see what would hold up if someone official asked.
Go section by section and mark each item one of three ways: solid (documented and actually practiced), paper-only (written down but not followed), or missing. Be honest about the middle category — it is the dangerous one. Compliance is not whether the paperwork exists. It is whether the organization can explain and defend its decisions. A policy you do not follow is often worse than no policy, because it proves you knew the standard and ignored it. When you finish, the paper-only column is your repair list.
☐ Job descriptions exist for each role and reflect the actual duties — they drive exempt status, ADA conversations, and workers' comp decisions later.
☐ Applications and interviews avoid medical, age, and other protected-status questions.
☐ Background checks, if used, follow FCRA steps: standalone disclosure, written authorization, and both pre-adverse and adverse action notices (our FCRA authorization template covers the paper).
☐ Offer letters state at-will status and avoid promise language ("annual salary" reads differently than "paid at an annualized rate") — see the offer letter template.
☐ Form I-9 completed on time for every hire: section 1 by day one, section 2 within three business days.
☐ New hire reported to the Texas state directory within 20 days.
☐ Onboarding covers expectations, policies, and reporting lines — not just tax forms. The Texas new hire checklist and 90-day onboarding template structure this.
Could you show that two candidates for the same role went through the same steps? Inconsistent process — extra interviews for one, skipped references for another — is how hiring discrimination claims get their footing, even when nothing discriminatory happened.
☐ Every salaried role has been checked against the FLSA duties tests — salary alone never makes anyone exempt. Use the classification checker for a first pass.
☐ Independent contractors would survive scrutiny: control, tools, schedule, integration into the business (see the contractor vs. employee guide).
☐ Nonexempt time records capture all hours actually worked — including early logins, working lunches, and after-hours texts. Off-the-clock habit is a claim waiting for a disgruntled ex-employee.
☐ Overtime is calculated on the regular rate, including nondiscretionary bonuses (the regular rate audit checklist walks through it).
☐ Paycheck deductions have written authorization as the Texas Payday Law requires — the wage deduction form pack exists for this.
☐ Pay periods and paydays are established, posted, and followed.
If a departed employee claimed two years of unpaid overtime tomorrow, your time records are the whole defense. If those records are supervisor memory and rounded guesses, the claim math defaults in the employee's favor. This is also where hidden money leaks live — the payroll leak calculator estimates what unmanaged overtime and misclassification actually cost.
☐ Each employee has one personnel file — not a drawer, an inbox, and a supervisor's truck.
☐ Medical information (accommodations, doctor's notes, FMLA paperwork, injury records) lives separately from the personnel file, access-restricted — the medical documentation storage checklist covers the rules.
☐ I-9s are stored apart from personnel files and purged on schedule.
☐ Retention follows a schedule instead of "keep everything forever" or "shred when the drawer fills" — see the Texas records retention schedule.
☐ Required posters are current and posted where employees actually work, including remote-worker equivalents (poster compliance checklist).
Pick a real recent problem employee. Does the file show what happened, when, what expectation applied, how the employee responded, and what followed? Documentation created the week before a termination reads exactly like what it is. Score your current habits with the documentation defensibility scorecard.
☐ A current handbook exists and was reviewed within the last two years — or after your last growth spurt, whichever was more recent (the full framework is at the Texas employee handbook system).
☐ Anti-harassment and complaint policies name at least two reporting routes, so nobody must complain to their harasser.
☐ At-will status is stated and not undermined elsewhere by promise language.
☐ PTO policy states what happens to accrued time at separation — in Texas, your written policy controls payout, so silence creates disputes (check yours with the PTO payout policy checker).
☐ If you are at 50+ employees, FMLA administration actually functions: notices, designations, tracking (the FMLA notice timeline tracker keeps deadlines honest).
☐ Accommodation requests — disability, pregnancy, religious — trigger a documented interactive process, not an informal yes or no (see the ADA interactive process packet).
Choose any policy and ask your most senior supervisor how it works in practice. If the answer does not match the book, you do not have a policy — you have a document. That gap, multiplied across supervisors, is policy-practice misalignment, and it is the single most common finding in our audits.
☐ Discipline follows a consistent structure across supervisors and departments — the progressive discipline guide sets one.
☐ Complaints have an intake route employees know and use; each one gets triaged deliberately — coaching issue, employee relations issue, investigation trigger, or legal exposure (the complaint intake decision tree makes the call repeatable).
☐ Someone is designated, and trained, to investigate before the complaint arrives — not selected in a panic after.
☐ No adverse action follows a complaint without someone checking the retaliation angle first (the retaliation risk checker is built for that moment).
☐ Terminations get a pre-decision review: documentation, consistency with similar cases, timing against protected activity (termination risk calculator, termination checklist).
☐ Final pay hits Texas Payday Law deadlines: six calendar days after discharge, next payday after a resignation (final paycheck deadline calculator).
☐ Unemployment claims get answered on time with the file you built — not with a narrative written from memory (TWC claim response evidence packet).
Take your last two terminations. Same offense category, same handling? If an outside reviewer would see different treatment, you need a documented, legitimate reason for the difference. "Different supervisors handle things differently" is not a reason; it is the finding.
15 employees: Title VII, the ADA, and Texas Labor Code Chapter 21 discrimination coverage apply. 20 employees: age discrimination (ADEA) and COBRA. 50 employees: FMLA, with tracking and notice obligations that require an actual process. Any size: the Texas Payday Law, I-9 verification, OSHA's general duty, and wage-hour rules under the FLSA apply from employee one — and sexual harassment protections under Texas law reach employers of any size, with personal liability possible for managers. If you crossed a threshold since your last policy review, that review is overdue. The Texas employer compliance calendar tracks the recurring deadlines; the HR law change tracker watches what is moving.
Texas employers work under two layers: federal law (FLSA wage and hour rules, I-9 verification, OSHA, anti-discrimination laws that phase in at 15 and 20 employees, FMLA at 50) and Texas-specific rules (the Texas Payday Law governing final pay and deductions, unemployment through TWC, workers' compensation election, and state posting requirements). The practical challenge is rarely knowing the list. It is keeping daily practice consistent with it. The Texas employment law basics FAQs cover the individual rules in depth.
Test decisions, not documents. Pull your last termination, your last complaint, and two personnel files. If the records explain what happened, when, who decided, and why — and the handling matches your written policy — you are in reasonable shape. If the paper is thin or the practice contradicts the policy, the gaps are already there; they just have not been tested yet.
No law requires one. But without written standards, every discipline or termination decision floats free of any stated rule, which makes consistency nearly impossible to demonstrate. The risk is not the missing handbook; it is having policies you do not follow, which can be worse than having none. Our Texas employee handbook system covers what belongs in one.
Under the Texas Payday Law, an employee who is discharged must be paid in full within six calendar days. An employee who quits must be paid by the next regularly scheduled payday. Missed deadlines are one of the most common — and most avoidable — TWC wage claim triggers. The final paycheck deadline calculator gives you the date for a specific separation.
A full review annually, plus a targeted review at every trigger event: crossing 15, 20, or 50 employees, adding a location or remote workers in another state, a leadership change, a new pay structure, or any claim or charge. Compliance decays quietly between reviews — policies stay still while practice drifts.
Paperwork is possession: the poster is up, the handbook exists, the file has forms in it. Defensibility is whether your organization can explain a specific decision, with contemporaneous records, applied consistently across similar cases. Investigators and hearing officers rarely ask whether you have a policy. They ask why this employee was treated this way, and whether others were treated the same.
If this checklist surfaced more than a few paper-only or missing items, an HR compliance review will tell you which ones carry real exposure and which can wait. One working call, a straight answer, no scare tactics.
Want to keep score first? Run the free HR System Risk Diagnostic and bring the result to the call.