Labour Law Compliance Audit

Labour Codes — Commencement (India, 2025-26):
The Government of India brought the four consolidated labour codes — the Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code (each enacted 2019-2020) — into force per Press Information Bureau release PRID 2192463 dated 21 November 2025, with the corresponding central Rules following in May 2026.

Scope of a labour-law compliance audit under the current (post-commencement) regime: an audit verifies an establishment's statutory registrations, contractor licences, wage structures, and welfare-fund contributions against both (a) the newly-commenced Codes and the central/state Rules notified thereunder, and (b) the pre-Code enactments that remain the operative citation for many specific compliance mechanics until their Code-era equivalents and state-level Rules are separately confirmed — including the Employees' Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952; the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948; the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972; the Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970; the Minimum Wages Act, 1948; the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965; and the Factories Act, 1948.

Because central Rules under the Codes were still following the November 2025 commencement (per the same PIB release) and state governments notify their own Rules under each Code on differing timelines, an audit report should flag, for each compliance area, whether the citation is to the Code-era provision or the pre-Code Act, and confirm the applicable state's Rules and effective date before relying on either framework as final.

A labour law audit is the examination of a business's compliance with the labour statutes — the wages and the working conditions, the employment records and the registers, the licences and the registrations, and the statutory payments — tested against the Factories Act 1948, the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act 1970, the Employees' Provident Funds Act 1952, the ESI Act 1948, and the state labour laws that apply to the business's location and industry. The audit answers the question the business should ask before the inspector does: are we compliant, and where are we not?

The labour audit is the business's own inspection, run on the same checklists the inspectors run. The registers and the records, the wages paid against the minimum wages, the PF and the ESI contributions against the statutory rates, the factory and the contract labour compliance, the licences current — each is tested against the statute, and each finding is a future inspection finding. The audit converts the unknown exposure into a known list.

The cost of an un-audited labour position is the surprise at the inspection: the demand for the years of the unpaid contributions, the prosecution for the register violations, the closure order for the factory non-compliance — each discovered at the inspector's visit, at the statutory rates and with the interest.

This service is for businesses that want their labour position known. We audit the compliance against the applicable statutes — the wages, the registers, the PF and the ESI, the licences, the contract labour — identify the gaps and the liabilities, compute the corrections and the payments due, and produce the compliance report with the remediation plan so the business is inspection-ready.

Code-era transition: the four Labour Codes (Wages, Social Security, Industrial Relations, Occupational Safety Health & Working Conditions) have central rules notified in May 2026. The pre-Code statutes remain operative during the transition; the audit tests the law actually applicable to your establishment (centre-appropriate-govt v state-appropriate-govt scope) — flagged Code-era throughout the report so you know which finding sits under the operative statute today and which shifts under the Code once your state notifies its rules.