You probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about your employee handbook. Wise employers understand that employee handbooks have several important business purposes.
First, they are marketing documents. Your organization has a website, marketing fliers and social media pages to promote your products and services. These materials were designed to influence potential buyers to have a positive image of your brand. You want to build a potential buyer’s confidence in your organization’s ability to solve a problem or somehow make life better. Your employee handbook should do the same for new hires – inspire confidence in your organization as a fair and good place to work.
Some organizations spend thousands on slick marketing materials, but their employee handbook is just a sad Word document. Sometimes they are not branded with the company logo. Others use multiple font types and sizes. The worst is when each section reads like it was written by a different author, which happens when someone is importing information from different sources. Some handbooks are filled with legal-sounding terms and phrases designed to intimidate the new hire. Reminding new hires of all the ways they can be terminated is not a good way to welcome them to the company!
Second, they are guidebooks. A good handbook clearly defines employee behavior. It clarifies what is expected and rewarded, and in turn, what behaviors might get you in trouble. It’s not a substitute for managing, and supervisors shouldn’t expect to have a written policy to support all their decisions. We often see handbooks with a full page devoted to the dress code with every violation listed. For most organizations, just saying “dress appropriately for your position” and “management reserves the right to send you home” is sufficient. If specialty shoes or apparel are required, it’s appropriate to mention those in the handbook. However, defining the difference between unapproved flip flops and approved sandals in a handbook for 50 employees seems silly (and will be perceived as silly by new hires).
Third, they are for compliance. There are some policies that simply need to be in a handbook. For example, if Paula Deen’s restaurant group had an employee handbook back in 2012 with a well-written harassment policy that communicated what employees should do if harassed, she would be millions of dollars wealthier today. Governmental agencies and legal system expect a company to have certain policies in place covering discrimination, harassment, at-will employment and several other key components of labor law compliance. Due to changes in compliance, some once-popular policies need to be purged from your handbook.
Contact the Davidson Group at 336-294-5053 to ensure your handbook has you covered. It’s time for a new handbook if it’s more than three years old, it was repurposed from another organization, it doesn’t reflect your brand or it has more pages than your company has employees.
