How to Create an Employee Handbook

Today we are going to answer one of the top questions I get from small business owners. Should we have an employee handbook? Great question. And it used to be a hard one. Oftentimes people view an employee handbook as a liability. In this video, I'm going to show you how to make yours an asset and one that you'll never regret having as a small business owner. Stay tuned as I walk through not only why you should have an employee handbook, but what the key elements of an employee handbook are so that you can help to either identify if you're going to do it yourself Update your handbook or hire a professional to help you. Thanks so much for joining us. Please make sure you smash that subscribe and like button. It helps our channel a ton and we'll continue to crank out more free content for you. Thanks for checking us out. All right, so let's dive into it. Oftentimes people worry about a handbook becoming a liability. This is a bit of an old school mentality. The thought process is If I put something in writing and I don't do it, then an employee could have potentially a legal case against me in the future. Example might be the steps leading up to a termination. What is our policy for how we discipline employees? Did we put that in writing in the handbook and not follow it step by step? And now we may have an unlawful termination case on our hands. We never recommend putting your disciplinary process in there step by step. We'll talk more about that when we get to that section. But that's just one example why people have got this misconception that employee handbook can be a liability for employers. The reality is that it's a tremendous asset. Not only does it provide your employees with all the critical information that they want and need, it's also to protect you legally by putting in place legal and state regulations in writing for your employees. So should you ever have any questions, you both are reading from the same playbook. An employee handbook is vital for small and large businesses. It sets clear expectations, outlines company policies, and serves as a reference point for both employees, managers, and you as an employer. Whether you're starting a business or looking to update your handbook, you're on the right video. Let's dive into what the pieces are of an effective employee handbook and how you should structure it. All right, first off, the basics. We want to determine the scope and size of the handbook. It's not a one-size-fits-all. We've written handbooks anywhere from 30 to 50 pages. So as you can imagine, there's a lot of variety in there. You might be saying to yourself, 30 pages, my goodness, why are they so long? Well, there's a lot of regulations and a lot of our own internal information we want to have documented in there. That all starts with the critical elements of a handbook, That's your company overview, your employment basics, like the types of employment, job classifications, compensation, things like pay periods, how overtime is paid, what your overtime policies are. You know, you can't tell somebody you won't pay them for overtime, but you can tell them they can't work unapproved overtime and discipline them if they do. Do you have a performance management process? We don't typically recommend putting detailed information there about that. And do you offer, you know, what is the employment status, exempt versus non-exempt? We also want to make sure in this initial overview section, we're covering what at-will employment is. We're gonna cover at-will employment multiple times typically in a handbook because it's something that as an employer is an essential policy to have. Will be reiterated throughout because these employment relationships can be terminated by either party at any time. Almost everywhere in the United States you would want this. So you need it to be crystal clear. And while having an at-will employment, um, policy allows you to separate from an employee at a given time, it does not prevent them from taking legal action against you after the employment is over. So always keep that in mind. I, I have to coach a lot of people up on this. If you check out some of our other videos on termination, we walk into some, some great thoughts and best practices around employment separation help to protect you. I always say it's, it's an at-will state. They've got, uh, you know, they've also got the right to sue you after they leave. So don't leave anything up to, um, up to anybody's judgment because as an employer, the burden of proof is always on you. So what are some important policies to include in our handbook? Well, we need to have an equal opportunity policy ensuring there's no discrimination in the workplace. Your EEO policy is really critical. There are both federal and state protected classes. It's important that you and your employees know this so nobody is discriminating, not employees or employer, against anyone on your team. Now, examples of protected classes can be things like age, race, and even things like political party can be protected at the state level. So making sure that you know the laundry list of protected classes is very important. It's also important important that you check up on that regularly. One of the biggest problems I see with employee handbooks is that people haven't looked at them in 5 years and they just sit there and they view it as a static document. Regulations are changing all the time. Make sure you're consistently getting your employee look— or your employee handbook looked at at least once a year. You've got somebody monitoring for those policies and when they change. Next up, you want a code of conduct policy. You want to outline behavior expectation. This is where we talk about things like general conduct, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable in the workplace. This can be a huge benefit if you ever have to have a disciplinary conversation. You've got in writing the type of behavior that's acceptable in your workplace. Somebody's violating that behavior, instead of you thinking, well, everybody knows you shouldn't act this way, now you've got it in writing. You also want to have obvious things in there like sexual and unlawful harassment, and have a complaint procedure. Who should I talk to for help if I have an issue that I want to raise a complaint or concern about? Make sure that the process This is not difficult and it's easy to understand. You should also have some form of corrective action or discipline policy. It should be very broad. You don't want this to be specific. This can create a contract if you make it too specific. And this is where a lot of people get it wrong. Like we talked about at the beginning of the video, you want to take measures as deemed appropriate by the manager. That's a great term that you want to have in there as it relates to your corrective action or discipline policy. A good handbook will also have details of your compensation process. This is going to outline things like the work week, pay periods, and paydays. Time is tracked, how is overtime calculated based on your state and federal regulations, does it need to be approved. Again, overtime always has to be paid, but we can't discipline somebody if they break our policy. You want to put something in about performance evaluations, but only if you do it and you don't want it to be specific. If you're not currently doing performance reviews and you're setting up an employee handbook, then don't put anything in there about it because you may just be putting yourself in a position, uh, where you might have to try to discuss that later with someone when you really don't want to. Next up is benefits and leave. So things like paid time off programs, sick leave if you offer it, jury leave, voting leave, any other leaves. Some are state required. This is why it's really important to work with a professional or do a lot of research because every state has different requirements around leave. For instance, jury and voting leave are required in most states, but not always to be paid leave. So if we're building a handbook for you, we include all necessary state— other things you want to include in this section are things like health and safety, smoking, drug and alcohol policies, Driving safety, workplace violence, obviously non-negotiable, non-acceptable. And any office closure situations, how things work if an office should be closed due to weather or things of that nature. Finally, the last section is workplace guidelines. Things like how does off-the-clock work get recorded so they can properly get paid? What are the meal and rest periods? Interestingly, the Fed has almost nothing to say about meal and rest periods, but every state has different regulations around this. Federal law requires lactation accommodation. Want an attendance and tardiness policy? Be specific and spend some time on that attendance and tardiness policy. This is another one where people tend to get hung up later on because it becomes a he said, she said over what the expectations were on when someone should arrive to work and what the attendance policy is. You have a lot of no-shows that end up coming really hard to terminate because they don't have anything in writing how to deal with that. You also want to have things in here about personal appearance and hygiene. You'd be surprised how many times we get the call about the smelly employee and how to approach that conversation. So putting something in writing can be very helpful for you and down the road. You want your social media policy, your parking policy, anything else important to go into this workplace guidelines section. And then finally, we have a single page typically at the end of a handbook related to separation, a resignation. We can ask them to please give us written notice. We can't mandate it, but we do consider it a professional courtesy. You want to have things in there about termination, again reiterating it's an at-will employment relationship. We want to mention personal property— take it with you. We don't want it here. We don't want to be stuck disposing of it after you leave. What do you do with company property? How do you give it back to us. Now, we can't say final checks will be withheld until the stuff is returned. There are other ways we can go about getting our equipment back or our property back, but you cannot hold their final check as a way of doing that. Last but not least is the acknowledgment page. You want somebody to be able to sign off and recognize that they have read and understand the employee handbook. And give them— give people time to actually read the handbook. This should be done during work time. I don't recommend on the first day because there's nothing more boring than coming in on your first day and reading an employee handbook. We want to capitalize on that emotional capital we have on a first day of employment, but we do want to compensate them for the time they're reading this. We don't want this to be evening activity, especially if it's an hourly violation. So make sure once they've signed it, you've added it to their employee file. If you've got a great HR system like Guru, we'll allow them to electronically sign it in there. It'll automatically be filed away in their file. Doing it manually, I gotta ask why. There's a better way. But ultimately, make sure you do as you say. Have policies in there that you plan to enforce. And, you know, having policies in there that you won't or can't enforce can oftentimes be more dangerous than not having anything in there at all. If you are going to start to roll out a policy or you have a policy, excuse me, in your handbook that you haven't necessarily enforced in the past, so maybe it's the performance evaluations, just make sure you give people enough time and warning when you are going to start enforcing a policy so that you maybe don't accidentally discriminate. If you had a policy in there that you started to enforce without telling anyone, and the first 3 violators of the policy all happened to be female, then it could be viewed as there's potential dimini— discrimination happening there. Um, so finally, just make it all engaging. Use infographics, visuals, even digital elements when you can. Remember, it's a reflection of your company's brand. You wanna have well-defined mission, vision, values inside there that get people excited to be a part of your team. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope this was helpful for you as you look to develop your employee handbook and continue to be a better employer. Congratulations on adding more people to your team and for creating jobs. It's an exciting time in an employer's life. And please, if you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe, make sure you hit the like button. And there is in the description, we'll put a link to our handbook building services. We build it as part of our recurring service model, or you could simply hire us for a very low one-time fee to build a handbook for you, and we'll even give you 90 days free access to our HR portal. Thank you so much for your time. Have an awesome day.