Matthies Law Firm, P.C.  

Serving as Employment Law Advisors for over 25 years

Guidelines for Creating Your Own Employee Hanbook

Some good reasons why your Company should create its own Employee Handbook:

1. Most employees want to know what the rules are, and will follow the rules if told what they are, so an employee handbook is a good place to explain your standard rules.

2. Most employees are proud of their workplaces and want to know more about the Company and its history, and a Handbook is a good place to put this information.

3. Handbooks don't cost much to produce, but can yield high employee satisfaction by opening up lines of communication.

4. An employee handbook helps to communicate important company policies and procedures about issues such as harassment, discrimination, payroll practices, and other personnel issues. If your company is covered by FMLA, an employee handbook is also a good place to include notices of FMLA rights.

5. An employee handbook notifies employees about performance expectations, and provides good evidence that the employee knew that certain conduct could result in discipline or discharge.

6. An employee handbook provides important information about benefit programs which are available to employees, and what steps are necessary to obtain those benefits. Federal law also requires that employees be provided with Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs) for certain benefit plans, and these are easy to include in your Handbook.

7. An employee handbook saves management time, because it answers common employee questions about how the Company operates.

8. An employee handbook informs employees about the limits of supervisory authority, which may limit the liability of the Company where a bad supervisor tries to engage in conduct which could expose the Company to lawsuits.

9. An employee handbook helps the Company to communicate its core values to its workforce.

10. An employee handbook helps to protect confidential Company information, by clearly informing employees of their duty to safeguard such information.

11. An employee handbook allows the Company to explain the reasoning behind the adoption of certain policies, which helps employees to understand certain policies which otherwise might create dissension or unhappiness (such as nepotism policies).

12. An employee handbook assists employees in avoiding conflicts of interest which could be harmful to the Company, by identifying the types of situations which can lead to such conflicts of interest.

13. An employee handbook can assist the Company in obtaining valuable upward feedback from its employees about problems in their work areas which might lead to reduced morale, lowered productivity or increased turnover if not addressed promptly.

14. In today's litigation-prone society, an employee handbook can help to prove that you explained your rules to your workers, and this can assist in all sorts of litigation (including litigation with an unhappy customer, or an injured visitor, or one of your own employees).

15. If your company is a government contractor, an employee handbook is a good place to include certain required notices to your employees about your EEO Policies and your AAPs.

One Size Does Not Fit All:

Okay, so you are sold on the idea of creating an Employee Handbook - and you want to rush out and buy a form handbook from some software vendor or copy off this sample handbook; print it out; and have an instant handbook to distribute to your employees.

Not so fast!!

In the United States, there are huge differences in the laws from state to state. A policy which is entirely legal in one state may get you in big trouble in another state. And, if you have a union (or one is trying to organize your employees), there may be substantial limits on what you can include in your Handbook without discussing it with the union first.

Furthermore, each industry and each labor market is different. Policies or benefits which may be common in one industry may be contrary to accepted practice in a different industry, and the same is true from one labor market to another. So, in designing your Employee Handbook, you need to be sensitive to "what the market will bear", and tailor your approach to fit your audience. Unless you are careful, you easily could do something which will backfire on you.

So, how should you go about creating your own Employee Handbook? We recommend that you print off a copy of our Sample Handbook (full text). However, if you just want to browse through individual sections, use the Intranet-Ready Handbook link below (as the full text will take awhile to load).

Once you have a full copy, you will need to go through a series of steps to create your own handbook.

Our firm would be happy to work with your company to develop a handbook for your employees, whether you simply need us to review your drafts or want us to do most of the drafting and final production work for you.  But, whatever you do, avoid taking shortcuts in creating your handbook, and don't try to adopt something "out of the box" (as the front-end investment of solid management time, and solid legal advice, will save countless headaches later).

Once you have created policies which fit your particular organization, your employees and the laws of your locale, the next step is to decide how you will publish your handbook. If many of your employees are on-line already, it may make sense to put your Handbook on your internal network or Lan. On occasion, it can be more workable to place the Handbook on the internet itself (as access can be controlled through passwords, if you do not wish to have the Handbook available to the general public).

Developing an Intranet-Ready Handbook

In order to illustrate the possible ways in which you can use the internet (or an intranet) to publish your Handbook, we have divided the Sample Handbook into various linked sections. This will help you to see how employees can navigate around the Handbook more easily, and find the information which they need. It is also possible to link specific forms to the applicable sections of the Handbook, so that an employee (or supervisor) instantly will have the correct form available to print off - or the employee can fill out and transmit the form electronically.

To go to the main page of the Intranet-Ready Handbook.

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