Employers should regularly revise and modify their employment policies and
employee handbooks as the law changes and as their operational needs
dictate. Once you make policy changes, however, must you communicate them to
your employees? And if so, how?
Distribute, Distribute, Distribute
To
be an effective management tool, personnel policies and employee handbooks must
be distributed to all employees.
Employers all too often overlook the need to communicate handbook and other policy
changes to their employees and underestimate the importance of requiring
employees to acknowledge their receipt of a revised policy.
Written Acknowledgement Is Key
A
signed acknowledgment is important proof that employees have received and are
aware of your current policies – thus negating any claim that an employee
“didn’t know” about your rules.
Consequently, whenever you implement a
policy change, you should distribute the changed policy to all employees and
require some type of written acknowledgment that they have received it. The
signed acknowledgments should be kept in employees’ personnel files.
All the employee handbook policies you
need, specifically for California
employers and ready to customize for your workplace.
Keep
Supervisors Looped In
Changes
in policies and employee handbooks must also be communicated to your
supervisors, and they must be
trained on the meaning and impact
of the policy changes.
Without
knowledge of the changes or training on how to properly apply new policies,
supervisors are much more likely to enforce your rules incorrectly or make
decisions that result in inconsistent treatment – which often leads to claims
of discrimination.
How You Can Get Into Trouble
Myriad
problems can arise when an employer fails to inform employees of policy and handbook
changes.
For
example, assume that when Employee A was hired, he received an employee
handbook and signed an acknowledgment that he received it. At the time he was
hired, the handbook stated that vacation pay accrues day by day and carries
over year to year, and employees are paid for accrued but unused vacation when
they leave the company.
At
some later point, the employer revises its vacation pay policy to state that
vacation time accrues only after an employee completes an anniversary year of employment,
vacation does not accrue day by day, unused vacation cannot be carried over to
the next year, and employees are not paid for earned but unused vacation days
upon termination.
But
the employer fails to distribute the revised policy to its current employees;
it merely provides the updated policy to new hires.
So
what happens when Employee A is discharged for, say, falsifying his timecard?
Tune in tomorrow to find out.
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free copy of 20 Must-Have Employee
Handbook Policies today!