An employee handbook is a corporate guide on communication that both employers and employees can use. It provides guidance and information about the organization’s mission, history, values, procedures, benefits, and policies, presented in a written format. It’s also a means of protecting employers against unfair treatment and discrimination claims. The manual is easily accessible to the company’s policies and practices and serves as an overview of the management team’s expectations.
As an employer, you should require employees to provide a written acknowledgment of receiving the handbook. Using your handbook, you can know which types of employees can fit into your program. To sort employees out during the review process, you can use a tool to review employee profiles to see who satisfies your expectations. Before giving out the handbook, also ensure it’s reviewed by legal counsel.
Which Policies Should an Employee Handbook Highlight?
While creating a corporate communication manual, you should make it concise and pertinent to your business. Outline the policies affecting your employees. Here are areas that will help you get started with a strong employee handbook.
1. Joining/Onboarding
Creating an employee handbook is one of the most common reasons firms do so. To get things started, go through the fundamentals with all of your new hires before they even walk through the door.
For new hires, this area might contain things like:
- Clause of “at-will” employment
- Statement on equal opportunity for employment
- Statement of potential conflict of interest
- Confidentiality pact
- The location of the office, the organization of the team, and the contact information of the most important people are all included in this section.
2. Code of Conduct
The code of conduct is the essence of corporate ethics suitable for your company. It highlights how employees should behave within the corporate culture. Some information you should include in a code of conduct section includes:
- Attendance requirements
- Grooming standards and dress code
- Code of ethics
- Workplace safety
It’s crucial to establish expectations and include penalties for not living up to them. When an employee routinely arrives late for work, for instance, you should direct them to the handbook for details on their schedule and the procedure for extensive lateness.
Also, if employees are required to dress a certain way, and some rogue employees insist on wearing something else, you should consider if you can ease the rules or enforce them strictly. Maybe you could include an idea like casual Fridays as a compromise. Regardless of your choice, you’ll set the staff up for success when you provide this information in the employee handbook.
3. Communications Policy
To become among the most successful companies, you must ensure there are clear communication policies. This is more important to keep in mind than ever before, as you need collaboration on most projects. If you provide employees with devices like laptops, you should know how they’re being used. How often do your employees use company equipment to explore the internet, connect with friends, or use social media? A quality guide on internal communication should clearly state your expectations on the appropriate use of devices and the behavior to maintain on those devices.
By using company equipment, your employees in this case should feel like representatives of the company. For example, sending texts to someone using company equipment can lead to disciplinary action if the messages highlight unacceptable behavior. Make employees understand other policies, including anti-harassment, anti-discrimination, and ethics policies, including different communication forms on different devices.
4. Nondiscrimination Policy
Another item to include in a work manual is a nondiscrimination policy. This is a necessary part if you want to craft an effective employee handbook. The employees should understand your company’s culture to avoid any instances of harassment or discrimination.
Another item to include in a work manual is a nondiscrimination policy. This is a necessary part if you want to craft an effective employee handbook. The employees should understand your company’s culture to avoid any instances of harassment or discrimination.
In the manual, you can include state and federal legislation championed by civil rights campaigners of the 1960s, which protects employees against discrimination through factors unrelated to the work they do. Some reasons for discrimination that should never be allowed include:
- Race
- Age
- Religion
- Disability
There are laws that prohibit discrimination. Understand that discrimination is not always on purpose. Even managers with good intentions can slip and discriminate against employees. Things like giving some employees a higher rating because the manager is closer to them can count as discrimination. A strong handbook ensures all employees have a defense against this kind of discrimination. Make your managers aware of the consequences of discrimination in the workplace. Ensure they understand your policies. You can provide them with leadership and supervisory training on non-discrimination.
5. Benefits and Compensation Policy
The staff may sometimes forget about any work benefits promised during the interview stage. One of the employee handbook examples you can explore is including this information in the manual to remind workers of their rights and perks, such as their vacation time and other details. Additionally, you should clarify issues like overtime, payroll deductions, and workers’ compensation insurance to cover all of your legal bases.
While designing the manual, keep things simple. You don’t have absolutes when it comes to business, as a change of circumstances could mean updating the benefits. Outline your compensation and benefits philosophy without talking about specific plan options and carriers. You can also specify how frequently your staff members will receive performance reviews without mentioning any specific pay raises. The reason you should not talk about specifics is that you might find out you cannot provide them.
6. Expense Policy
Most workers spend their own money to conduct their jobs, particularly if they are expected to travel or take a job outside their normal office on a regular basis.
Expense policies in your employee handbook should outline which charges may be repaid and how to go about doing so.
7. Leave Policy
A well-defined leave policy informs your workers about the frequency with which they may take time off and the procedures they must follow in order to do so. Some policies that should be included are:
- The number of holiday days or hours offered to workers annually should be specified.
- The actual amount of sick days/hours that workers are entitled to each year should also be included here.
- Holidays observed by the company — Provide a calendar of company-wide holidays so that workers may make travel arrangements.
- For big life events such as the birth of a baby, describe the time off that is available.
Keeping your staff happy and productive means allowing them to take time off. Create a leave policy for your handbook using our employee leave template.
8. Separation and New Hire Policy
This section lists all conditions under which your staff may quit. Some examples include:
- Frequency of pay periods – monthly, bi-weekly, weekly
- Eligibility for benefits – if there’s a waiting period, specify how long it is.
- Transfers and relocation – when an employee moves or quits, what type of notice do they need to provide? Is there relocation assistance for employees transferring to another office in the company?
- Referrals – Are there rewards when an employee refers talent you eventually hire?
9. Acknowledgment of Receipt
Make sure your staff members are familiar with the information in your employee handbook and have them sign the acknowledgment of receipt. You can print two copies, give one to each employee, and store the second in their employment file. Make a decision in advance, depending on the technology available:
- If you’re willing to accept digital signatures
- If the employee handbook will be available online
- If a digital copy can be printed
To avoid any disputes on resignation and post-compensation, all receipts and payouts should come in several copies.
10. Company Story
And last but not least, don’t forget to introduce yourself and say something about why you’re here! (Even if this isn’t really a policy, it’s nonetheless very necessary.)
Your company’s narrative is the underlying basis that drives employees to show up and achieve extraordinary things every single day, from the beginning to the end. Share this history with newly hired staff members so that they may feel a part of the team.
Consider this:
- What’s your business?
- Why is it important to know this?
- What’s the point of bringing this up to other people?
Tips for Developing an Employee Handbook
To make an employee policies handbook effective, you should not construct it as an employment agreement, which can affect the employment-at-will status. Include legal counsel when writing the policies. Here are tips you can use to improve the manual’s contents.
- Review and Revise Company Policies – Often, company policies and procedures are used as the source when writing a handbook. Scan the environment to spot common practices that are in place. If you don’t have policies, you should first develop them. No matter if you are crafting an employee handbook for a small business or large corporation, make sure you have a legal team go over the document.
- Make a Summary of your Top Corporate Policies – Employee handbooks that make a summary of policies are proven to be more effective. These short statements should be simple and must contain no legal jargon. The content should speak to your employees in a language they understand.
- Make an Outline of Paragraphs Listed in the Handbook – Top employee handbook examples have a table of contents for easy navigation, both in their printed and digital copies. You can include additional topics if necessary, but the most important thing is to consider legal mandates for state and federal laws that touch on the welfare of employees.
- Review the Handbook – Through the review process, you can find inaccurate information or sections that are not easy to comprehend. You can have the handbook reviewed by a project team, the HR team, or both. This is important as the handbook must provide accurate information, which you can use when pursuing legal defense. Share the finalized version with the legal counsel for review. This is vital as it helps to ensure the manual does not contain statements that could create contractual agreements.
- Create a Published Copy of the Book as a Means of Publication – You can seek requests for proposals from select vendors. Once the right vendor is selected, you should work with them through the different steps to organize and format the handbook to the appropriate size and style. Make sure the formatting and the contents are edited several times before taking the book to print.
- Add Updates – Sometimes, companies are forced to introduce changes to their handbooks. Ideally, someone should be in charge of keeping your handbooks up-to-date — usually, those would-be employees from legal or recruiting departments (or both). Also, it’s important to conduct a review periodically to ensure no policy changes were overlooked and that the handbook is still relevant.
Conclusion
The employee handbook provides direction and helps your employees understand the accepted code of conduct. It’s an important document that you should provide to all employees and confirm they have understood its contents through the acknowledgment signature. Make sure to keep the handbook updated, considering company policies and employment laws.
