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Guidelines for Creating Your Own Employee Hanbook
Some good reasons why your Company
should create its own
Employee Handbook:
- Most employees want to know what the rules are, and will
follow the rules if told what they are, so an employee handbook is a
good place to explain your standard rules.
- Most employees are proud of their workplaces and want to
know more about the Company and its history, and a Handbook is a good
place to put this information.
- Handbooks don't cost much to produce, but can yield high
employee satisfaction by opening up lines of communication.
- An employee handbook helps to communicate important company
policies and procedures about issues such as harassment,
discrimination, payroll practices, and other personnel issues. If your
company is covered by FMLA, an employee handbook is also a good place
to include notices of FMLA rights.
- An employee handbook notifies employees about performance
expectations, and provides good evidence that the employee knew that
certain conduct could result in discipline or discharge.
- An employee handbook provides important information about
benefit programs which are available to employees, and what steps are
necessary to obtain those benefits. Federal law also requires that
employees be provided with Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs) for certain
benefit plans, and these are easy to include in your Handbook.
- An employee handbook saves management time, because it
answers common employee questions about how the Company operates.
- An employee handbook informs employees about the limits of
supervisory authority, which may limit the liability of the Company
where a bad supervisor tries to engage in conduct which could expose
the Company to lawsuits.
- An employee handbook helps the Company to communicate its
core values to its workforce.
- An employee handbook helps to protect confidential Company
information, by clearly informing employees of their duty to safeguard
such information.
- An employee handbook allows the Company to explain the
reasoning behind the adoption of certain policies, which helps
employees to understand certain policies which otherwise might create
dissension or unhappiness (such as nepotism policies).
- An employee handbook assists employees in avoiding
conflicts of interest which could be harmful to the Company, by
identifying the types of situations which can lead to such conflicts of
interest.
- An employee handbook can assist the Company in obtaining
valuable upward feedback from its employees about problems in their
work areas which might lead to reduced morale, lowered productivity or
increased turnover if not addressed promptly.
- In today's litigation-prone society, an employee handbook
can help to prove that you explained your rules to your workers, and
this can assist in all sorts of litigation (including litigation with
an unhappy customer, or an injured visitor, or one of your own
employees).
- If your company is a government contractor, an employee
handbook is a good place to include certain required notices to your
employees about your EEO Policies and your AAPs.
One Size Does Not Fit All:
Okay, so you are sold on the idea of creating an Employee
Handbook - and you want to rush out and buy a form handbook from some
software vendor or copy off this sample handbook; print it out; and
have an instant handbook to distribute to your employees.
Not so fast!!
In the United States, there are huge differences in the laws
from state to state. A policy which is entirely legal in one state may
get you in big trouble in another state. And, if you have a union (or
one is trying to organize your employees), there may be substantial
limits on what you can include in your Handbook without discussing it
with the union first.
Furthermore, each industry and each labor market is different.
Policies or benefits which may be common in one industry may be
contrary to accepted practice in a different industry, and the same is
true from one labor market to another. So, in designing your Employee
Handbook, you need to be sensitive to "what the market will bear", and
tailor your approach to fit your audience. Unless you are careful, you
easily could do something which will backfire on you.
So, how should you go about creating your own Employee
Handbook? We recommend that you print off a copy of our Sample Handbook
(full text). However, if
you just want to browse through individual sections, use the
Intranet-Ready Handbook link below
(as the full text will take awhile to load).
Once you have a full copy, you will need to go through a
series of steps to create your own handbook.
Our firm would be happy to work with your company to develop a
handbook for your employees, whether you simply need us to review your
drafts or want us to do most of the drafting and final production work
for you. But, whatever you do, avoid taking shortcuts in creating
your handbook, and don't try to adopt something "out of the box" (as
the front-end investment of solid management time, and solid legal
advice, will save countless headaches later).
Once you have created policies which fit your particular
organization, your employees and the laws of your locale, the next step
is to decide how you will publish your handbook. If many of your
employees are on-line already, it may make sense to put your Handbook
on your internal network or Lan. On occasion, it can be more workable
to place the Handbook on the internet itself (as access can be
controlled through passwords, if you do not wish to have the Handbook
available to the general public).
Developing an Intranet-Ready
Handbook
In order to illustrate the possible ways in which you can use
the internet (or an intranet) to publish your Handbook, we have divided
the Sample Handbook into various linked sections. This will help you to
see how employees can navigate around the Handbook more easily, and
find the information which they need. It is also possible to link
specific forms to the applicable sections of the Handbook, so that an
employee (or supervisor) instantly will have the correct form available
to print off - or the employee can fill out and transmit the form
electronically.
To go to the main page of the Intranet-Ready
Handbook.
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