Employers often have some basic questions about employee handbooks. We’ll tackle a few of them today and tomorrow.
Q. What is the purpose of an employee handbook?
A. Simply put, an employee handbook sets out the basic employment policies that apply to your employees, the rules that they need to follow, and the assurances from you that they can rely on.
More than that, though, an employee handbook is also a critical tool you can use to make sure all of your employees have received notice of their legal rights and obligations—notices that are required under California law and often federal law as well.
Without an up-to-date employee handbook, it can be very difficult to prove that you provided the required notices or established the proper policies.
Q. What should be left out of an employee handbook?
A. An employee handbook should not be used as an operational guide for managers and supervisors.
In other words, don’t use the handbook as a tool for giving instructions to supervisory personnel on how to manage or deal with subordinates, or to set out the rules that managers alone are responsible to implement.
You should also not include information that you consider to be confidential or intellectual property.
Get your copy of the newly updated 2012 California Employee Handbook Template—101 customizable handbook policies specifically written for California employers!
Q. What are the pitfalls of not having an employee handbook?
A. From an operational standpoint, the lack of a solid employee handbook means that employees may not know which rules and policies apply to them, and as a result, may not behave accordingly.
From a legal standpoint, an employee handbook is often the best, and sometimes the only, documentary evidence that an employer can put forward to demonstrate the company’s policies and that employees were adequately notified of those policies.
Thus, the absence of an employee handbook, in and of itself, is often used in litigation to show that an employer either didn’t know which laws (as reflected in company policies) applied or didn’t care.
At a minimum, the lack of an employee handbook can be used to demonstrate that an employer did not give employees notice of the rules—and it’s hard to hold employees accountable for not following rules they didn’t know about.
Tomorrow, a few more handbook Q&As. Plus, a comprehensive employee handbook template you won’t want to be without—specifically for California employers and newly updated for 2012!
Download your free copy of
20 Must-Have Employee Handbook Policies today!