The Power of Employee Handbook for Employees and Employers

Employee Handbook

What Is An Employee Handbook?

The employee handbook is a packet of information, provided digitally, in-hand, or both, to every employee in the company. It shares useful information regarding your company culture, policies and expectations, as well as communicates any specific details pertinent to working for your company that may be unique from other employers. Many companies use the employee handbook as a tool to disseminate federal or state mandates for written communication to employees, such as Equal Employment Opportunity.

While an actual employee handbook is not a federally mandated document, it’s a great way to ensure you have the forms that are required in one, easy to use document, that can be recreated and given to all your new hires.

How An Effective Employee Handbook Can Guide Employees?

Crafting a comprehensive employee handbook should be a top priority for your organisation.

A good employee handbook provides essential information to help new recruits to settle down. With a well-written, comprehensive handbook, employees always know what is expected of them at work. They know how their employer will address and apply the policies and procedures of the business and what they, as employees, can expect from the employer.

They can have reasonable expectations that fellow employees with similar issues will receive similar treatment. They share a knowledge base with the rest of the employees, too, and know what is important for the business.

And most importantly, Employees can see the benefits and compensation that they are entitled to receive clearly spelled out. Hence, the handbook serves a quick reference guide to a great deal of information that employees need at work.

How An Effective Employee Handbook Useful For Employers?

Employers use the policies in an employee handbook to provide the road map to the ethical and legal treatment of employees. They protect themselves from lawsuits, such as harassment claims, wrongful termination claims, and discrimination claims.

As employee handbooks generally contain a code of conduct for employees with guidelines around appropriate behaviour for the individual workplace, there is a shared approach to addressing workplace issues, this is the best potential to create a harmonious, fair, employee and employer supportive workplace. It allows the employer to know that there is mutual understanding with the employees about actions and behaviours that will warrant disciplinary action up to and including employment termination in their workplace.

An employee handbook is thus a critical document for setting clear expectations, and providing policies for all employees to follow, and making it easier for employers to know how to work with employees to deal with problems when they arise.

Now that we know that employee handbook is important in a company, let us walk through the information that we would need to include.
  • Tell Your Story

Your company “story” is at the heart of your employee handbook and should be the first section of your book. our new hires are meeting your business for the first time, and just like meeting a person for the first time, they want to become better acquainted. Your employee handbook introduces your work culture and presents your story in a uniform, documented way. The company story must include the company’s mission, values, founder story and as well as the cultures.

  • Document Your Policies & Present Your Perks

Your handbook is a great conduit for providing legally required written information to employees, as well as communicating other policies, guidelines, and expectations in one clean, easy-to-use document. It’s also a good document to have in case you find yourself in a litigative situation or employee-employer conflict. If you have provided your policies clearly in a handbook, your employees share the responsibility of reading and knowing what those policies are.

What Do Most Employee Handbooks Include?

As every company’s requirements, core values, and goals are different, each one should have an employee handbook that is unique and reflects these characteristics. Most employee handbooks include information on:

  • Company culture, values, and a mission statement
  • Human resource and legal information as well as rights and obligations related to employment
  • Realistic expectations: both what the company expects to see from its employees and what employees can expect from the company
  • Company policies about vacation time, sick days, non-discrimination, etc.

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This Is How To Create An Effective Employee Handbook

How To Create An Effective Employee Handbook