If you do business in the city of San Francisco pay attention.  Certain employers are covered by the Health Care Security Ordinance (HCSO) and/or the Fair Chance Ordinance (FCO), and are required to submit an annual reporting form to the OLSE each year.  The 2024 Annual Reporting form is due on Friday, May 2, 2025. The penalty for not submitting the form is $500 per quarter. 

If you aren’t sure if you are covered by the HCSO, the website has a handy questionnaire that will let you know.  You will need to answer four questions:

  • Did any employees work regularly (104 or more hours per quarter) in the city of San Francisco (including remote workers)?
  • How many workers did you have in 2024 (worldwide)?
  • Did you have a contract to perform work for the City and County of San Francisco in 2024?
  • Are you for profit or non-profit?

As an employer, you are not required to submit the HCSO form if:

  • You employed fewer than 5 persons in each of the 4 calendar quarters of 2024, and you do not have a contract with the City or County of San Francisco; or
  • You had no employees within the geographic boundaries of San Francisco in any quarter of 2024.

The OLSE website has some good instructions here.  You will need your San Francisco Business Account number to complete the form(s), and if you don’t have one, you will need to register.

If you are a covered employer you will be required to enter the total dollar amount spend each quarter for health care expenditures.  Many businesses have their brokers assist in figuring this out.  If you underspent, you will be required to make it up (which can get expensive). But that is a cost of doing business in San Francisco.

The Fair Chance Ordinance (FCO) may cover you if you conduct background checks for San Francisco employees. There is required reporting on that issue as well.

In my experience, the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (OLSE) is quite patient with employers who self-report, even if they are in arrears (i.e. should have reported sooner, yet just realized it now).  However, once an employee files a claim, the self audit and fix solution is not available.  Proactive compliance and fixes are rewarded.

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.