Spring Cleaning Your HR: 4 Compliance Items Every Small Business Owner Should Check Off Before May

One of the great things about being in this role is the connections with other business owners, which are amazing. But I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that just about in every conversation with a business owner or leader, I have to explain how AI isn’t going to replace me. Will it make me more efficient? Yes. Will it give me back hours in my day to focus on other client work? Yes. Will it completely replace me? It might, but I don’t think it will in my tenure of a career. Let me explain.

I had a client recently who came to me wanting role clarity. Simple enough on the surface. But as we talked, the real picture emerged: they had a vision for where they wanted their organization to be, staff capacity challenges they were navigating today, and they were trying to figure out how to do both at the same time without dropping the ball on either.

In that moment, I didn’t open a dashboard. I thought back to my time as a W2 HR professional, when I sat in that same tension with a leadership team. I pulled from that experience and built them a blueprint. Here’s what we address right now to ease the capacity pressure, and here’s how we simultaneously lay the building blocks to succession each team member into the vision they’re working toward a year from now.

No AI tool prompted that. No algorithm suggested I draw from a 10-year-old memory. That came from being in the room, listening between the lines, and knowing what questions to ask.

And that’s exactly what brings me to this. As we head into spring, compliance deadlines are quietly stacking up, and while AI might remind you they exist, it cannot assess your specific situation, catch what’s missing in your documentation, or make the judgment calls that keep you protected. That’s the work. So, let’s talk about four things that should be on your radar right now.

1. OSHA Form 300A — Yes, This Applies to You

To kick off our spring cleaning, let’s talk about OSHA Form 300A and before you scroll past thinking this doesn’t apply to you, stay with me for a second. This is one of the most common assumptions I hear from small business owners: “We haven’t had any injuries, so we don’t have to worry about it.” Not quite. Even with a clean record, there are still compliance pieces that have to happen.

For most small businesses, this is actually straightforward. Your log needs to be posted through April 30th, even if there is nothing to report. A zero-injury year doesn’t get you off the hook; it just means your form reflects that. And if your team is remote? This still applies to you. Without a physical workplace to post it, the standard practice is to send a notification to your staff, and an email works, so the requirement is still met.

The mistake I see most often? Business owners simply don’t do it. Not because they’re careless, but because they genuinely believe that no injuries means no obligation. Now you know better.

2. Remote & Hybrid Policies — “We Just Trust Each Other” Is Not a Policy

Next on our spring cleaning list is your remote and hybrid policy, and I want to ask you something before we go any further. If you have employees working remotely, do you actually have a written policy around it? And if you do, does your team know what’s in it?

This is where I love to lean into leaders and ask one simple question: What guidance have you actually given your team about how they work from home? Some owners I talk to are very outcomes-focused; they want to see the deliverables by the end of the week, and they trust their team to figure out the how. And honestly, that can work beautifully when the communication is clear, and both sides feel heard. When an employee feels the expectations are too heavy, the best leaders I’ve seen create space for that conversation and land somewhere that works for both.

But here’s where it gets tricky. “We just trust each other” is not a policy. Wage and hour risk, data security, equipment responsibility, and communication expectations need to be documented. Not because you don’t trust your team, but because clarity protects both of you. A good remote work policy isn’t about surveillance or micromanagement. It’s about making sure everyone is operating from the same playbook and that you’re covered if something ever goes sideways.

3. Records & I-9 Audits — Something Is Always Found

Let’s talk about your records and specifically your I-9s. Here’s something I tell every client before we start an audit: brace yourself a little. In all the years I have been doing HR audits, I have yet to complete an I-9 review where we didn’t find something that needed to be corrected. Not because employers are careless, but because these forms have a lot of moving parts and mistakes are incredibly easy to make.

The question I get almost every single time is: do we throw out the original and have the employee complete a brand new I-9, or do we make corrections directly on the existing form and move forward? The answer matters because how you correct it is just as important as catching the error in the first place. Destroying the original or starting over without proper documentation can actually create more risk than the original mistake did.

Spring is the perfect time to pull your I-9 file, do a self-audit, and make sure work authorization expirations aren’t sneaking up on you. If you find errors and aren’t sure how to correct them properly, that is exactly the kind of thing worth picking up the phone for.

4. AI Governance — You Get to Decide How AI Partners With Your Business

And here’s where we come full circle. Remember how we started this conversation, talking about AI and how it can create capacity and give us back time? I stand by that. But here is the other side of that coin that I want small business owners to think about.

When you let AI start building things for you, job descriptions, policies, and onboarding documents without guardrails, what often happens is it starts to incorporate a culture it doesn’t know. Your culture. The way you lead, the values you’ve built, the things that make your team yours. AI doesn’t know any of that unless you tell it. And even then, it’s interpreting, not experiencing.

So, what does an AI policy look like for a small business? It doesn’t have to be complicated. What you want is a written policy and a simple SOP that answers a few key questions: How will we use AI in this organization? What decisions will always require a human? What is the same standard we expect from everyone on the team? You get to decide how AI partners with your business, but you have to decide it intentionally and put it in writing before someone else makes that decision for you.

The Bottom Line

I know spring cleaning is not always the most exciting thing on your to-do list. Trust me I have a yard at home that is currently giving me the same kind of guilt every time I pull into the driveway. But here is what I want you to hold onto. The work you do now to get your compliance house in order makes everything that comes later so much smoother. When we roll into third quarter and start talking about budgets for the following year, you want to be planning from a clean foundation. And when fourth quarter hits and we are having conversations about team performance and compensation increases, you want to be focused on your people not scrambling to find paperwork or correct something that should have been handled in April.

Spring cleaning is not just about tidying up. It is about setting yourself up to lead well for the rest of the year. And if any of these four areas made you pause and think “I need to look into that” that pause is worth listening to. You do not have to figure it out alone. That is what I am here for.

Ready to spring clean your HR?

Reach out at nicole@murryconsult.com or visit murryconsult.com to learn more about how MurryConsult can help your small business stay compliant and lead with confidence.