Overview
Keep your company protected with a foolproof employee handbook. Your employee handbook plays an important role in communicating with and providing information to your employees. Increasingly, your employee handbook has to ensure that it is aligned with strategic and business objectives, is properly drafted, and is effectively implemented.
Employee handbooks are a critical tool in providing important information about your organization to your employees -- and other interested parties. Employee handbooks typically describe what you expect of your employees and what your employees can (should) expect from you. Employee handbooks also provide critical information about your organization and your workplace, and how your employees are expected to fit in.
Employee handbooks further formalize the mutual expectations. In delineating these expectations employee handbooks create opportunities and risks. Handbooks provide your organization with the opportunity to enhance the value of its human capital, make your organization more competitive, and improve individual and organizational performance. Conversely, handbooks that are improperly drafted can impede the achievement of business objectives, increase employment related liabilities, and reduce managerial prerogatives by making promises or commitments to certain procedural safeguards that your organization did not intend to make. As noted in a memorandum from a former General Counsel of the NLRB: “…incorrectly designed employee handbooks can violate the law and have a ‘chilling effect’ on employees’ activities.”
Thus, while your employee handbook provides you with the opportunity to make your work force more committed and supportive of organizational goals, it can also serve as the basis for employees’ legal action and can significantly reduce employees’ commitment to your organization’s success.
Areas Covered
- Key employee handbook issues in 2022.
- Updating Policies in Light of Major Changes Over the Past Two Years
- How your organization can reduce the gap between policy issuance and effective implementation.
- The basics of employee handbook development.
- The expanding purposes and scope of employee handbooks.
- The dimensions of critical handbook policies.
- The framework of employee handbook audits activities.
- Enhance your employment brand;
- Play a key role in recruitment and retention;
- Enhance employee relations, employee morale, and productivity;
- Contribute to uniform and consistent application, interpretation, and enforcement of organizational policies and rules;
- Include critical medical issues to reduce liabilities;
- Protect your organization against claims of improper employee/supervisor conduct; and
- Reduce your organization’s exposure to employment related liabilities.
