Are you tired of explaining job expectations, current policies, and compensation rules to employees? Eliminate it with an effective employee handbook.
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In fact, 67% of employees believe employee handbooks are quite useful; that’s enough reason for you to create comprehensive employee handbooks for your company.
We have thus curated this comprehensive guide on employee handbooks with crucial sections and a downloadable template. You’ll also find the sources you can get employees’ employee handbooks from. Let’s dive in!
What Is an Employee Handbook?
An employee handbook is a staff manual or field guide for employees to refer to and be aware of critical company values, policies, employee rules, and expected behaviors.
The best employee handbooks have the following characteristics:
- Cover dress code, company mission statement, values, vision, working conditions, and code of conduct.
- Help business owners provide employees with accurate company information regardless of their department or manager.
- Allow supervisors to better manage employees.
- Provide new hires with essential information, such as work standards required to kickstart their journey to boost their confidence and efficiency.
- Serve as a reference for existing employees that they can rely on whenever they need workplace-related information such as employment rights and payroll procedures.
Note: Companies must hand over the new employees’ employee handbooks on the 1st day at work and give a copy to existing employees whenever it is updated.
Not having a comprehensive employee handbook can expose your company to inconsistent practices, legal risks, and communication breakdowns. When employees are unclear about the core company policies and the company’s expectations, the chances of legal disputes and confusion are higher. Cut this hassle by creating a comprehensively effective employee handbook quickly and correctly with functional HR and payroll software.
Employee Handbook Examples
Before we move ahead with employee handbooks, let’s have a closer look at some examples to understand them better.
- One of the prime employee handbook examples, Netflix’s employee handbook, clearly highlights the company’s culture and values.
- Another one on the list of examples of employee handbooks is HubSpot’s employee handbook. It’s in a traditional PowerPoint format but maintains the transparency it promotes.
Free Downloadable Employee Handbook Template
Creating an employee handbook utilizing employee handbook templates makes the process easy while reducing the chances of omissions of crucial sections. For further assistance in creating a relevant handbook, you may collaborate with your HR service provider or use an employee handbook builder.
- This sample employee handbook covers all the necessary policies that businesses must have in their handbook, which are valid across 50 US states.
- However, it might not have some of your business-specific policies that you must remember and include.
- You may also find that this sample employee handbook only covers the company information and policies superficially. Feel free to modify it as per your needs.
- Don’t forget to check local laws to ensure that your handbook includes them all.
But this entire process of creating a handbook is elaborate and exhausting.
To avoid the hassle and create and manage all your handbook policies, use payroll and HR software. Such software enables you to efficiently manage employees’ expenses, payroll, benefits, apps, and more in a centralized place.
Compliance note
The above employee handbook template doesn’t incorporate a non-compete clause because prohibiting employees from working for a competitor is against US labor law. The states have also banned this clause.
However, this handbook indirectly states that employees must refrain from actions harming the company’s reputation or conflicting with its interests during employment.
What Sections to Include in Your Employee Handbook?
The employee handbook incorporates all the business intricacies that employees must be aware of to work in alignment with the company. Let’s dive into them one by one –
1. Company Introduction
The employee handbook must begin with an elaboration of the company’s core values and a powerful yet genuine mission statement. You must also include the core reason that the company was founded with the initial discovery journey.
2. Company Culture
Dive into the elements that form the company’s identity. Mention its personality, leadership ideas, values, and driving mission. This section must clearly highlight the company’s true personality and environment.
3. Nondisclosure Agreement
A nondisclosure agreement is a confidentiality agreement that potentially safeguards your business’s proprietary data. This agreement restricts employees from sharing certain business details with outsiders.
4. Anti-discrimination Policy
This policy facilitates compliance with federal labor laws that help you eliminate workplace discrimination. That’s why you must list out the major anti-discrimination policies with all the state law-specific requirements in your employee handbook.
Suggested Read: Hostile Work Environment: The Ultimate Guide
5. Benefits and Compensation
This part of the handbook clearly explains the employees’ compensation cycle, including the payment days and frequency. What’s more, you can dive deeper into the additional perks that employees enjoy, such as health insurance, flextime, and commuter benefits.
6. Employment Information
A handbook is incomplete without general employment information, like the next steps when an employee decides to quit and an elaboration on the company’s probationary period.
Also, adapt and incorporate the concept of at-will employment. It gives you and your employee the freedom to terminate the employment bond for any reason and at any time.
7. Technology Policy
Here, you must discuss the computer and technology related rules. It defines the employer’s rights to access company electronics and electronic documents and the policy of updating passwords when needed. You can also include a mobile usage policy and hacks to secure the company device’s passwords.
8. Leave Policies
Leave policies are an intricate part of employee handbooks as they educate employees on their parental leaves, paid time off, sick leaves, and other leave-related policies. This section also lists the company holidays and jury duty policies.
9. Discipline Policy
The discipline policy in the employee handbook for small businesses or enterprises states restricted employee behaviors while alerting employees on the application of the at-will employment policy. It explains the steps the company can take regarding disciplinary action while the discipline policy is in full effect.
10. Signature
The signature verifies and seals the fact that the employee has received, carefully gone through, and understood the document. After signing their own employee handbook, the employees tend to give more weight to the listed rules and policies.
The knowledge of policies can help employees defend themselves in case they fall prey to wrong termination lawsuits.
11. Other Important Inclusions
These were the general sections that an employee handbook must have. However, we acknowledge that every business is unique. So, here are some business-specific elements that make an important part of the employee handbook –
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission statement
- Employees’ rights under specific employment laws
- Workplace safety policies
- Remote working rules
- Employer-employee relationship
- Employee attendance policies
- Code of conduct, including an ethics policy that emphasizes business ethics, dress code, and drug policy
- Core expectations from both employees and employer perspective
- Disclaimers that the handbook is not an employment contract or doesn’t cover every single employment scenario.
Interesting Read: Best Ways To Improve Employee Morale
Legal Considerations When Creating an Employee Handbook
After curating your employee manual based on your company’s culture, size, and location, it’s time to consider the legal perspective.
1. Business Size
Every state has some business-size-specific laws. Here are some major ones –
- Companies with 50+ employees must adhere to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and offer health insurance as per the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
- Businesses having 15+ employees must follow policies listed by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
- Seattle businesses with 20+ employees must mandatorily provide commuter benefits.
- California companies having 5 employees must also give pregnancy benefits to their employees.
Also, if your employees’ state has mandated paternal or maternity leave, you must abide by the maternity leave policy, depending on your business’s size.
2. State Requirements
Consider the state your employees are working from to decide upon the state-specific policies to include in the employee manual. Here are some major state-specific requirements –
Sick leave
Does your state or city specify the minimum sick leaves an employee must have? Mention that in your company’s employee handbook.
For instance, California has a paid sick leave regulation under which employees get an hour of leave for every 30 hours they work.
Marijuana and alcohol usage
Although some states like New York, California, Alaska, and Arizona have legalized the usage of marijuana, you can prohibit your employees from using it.
For prohibition, you must clearly state it in the handbook. You can also mention an anti-alcohol policy for employees in the handbook.
Gun laws
Does one or many of your employees’ states allow employees to carry weapons or firearms on the office premises? Mention in detail the instances when employees can carry them during employment.
Lunch and break
Some states have unique laws regarding break time for employees. For instance, California laws specify that employees who work for more than 10 hours per day must mandatorily get two 30-minute meal breaks.
3. Employee-specific Policies
The elements–policies and rules of your employee handbook–vary with the types of employees your company employs.
- Clearly outline policies for part-time or hourly employees, covering lunch breaks, breaks, and paid time off. Additionally, provide detailed information on overtime compensation.
- Specify in the handbook which policies and benefits do not apply to independent contractors.
- Define the benefits and hours remote workers must mandatorily work.
Compliance note
If you have remote workers spread across cities and states, your employee handbook must have laws of city or state-specific jurisdictions. Comply with employment laws mandated by the state where your employees are based, not necessarily where the business is registered or operates.
Where to Get an Employee Handbook?
To get an employee handbook, you have to develop one. But this is a rigorous and technical process. To ease it out, you can seek help from a handbook sample provider or utilize a tool. Here are some sources you can get a handbook from –
1. HR Software
60% of business owners struggle to adhere to ever-changing regulations and compliance. Here’s when HR software comes in. It centralizes and tracks employee information and HR compliance policies. What’s more, such software allows you to create, log, and distribute critical HR documents in one place while offering holistic employee handbooks.
2. Payroll Service
Payroll service providers equip you with an excellent employee handbook in addition to its many services to best meet your HR needs. However, before signing up for payroll software, you must carefully check whether it offers HR features, including handbook templates. Moreover, using payroll software can help you reduce payroll processing time by 90%.
3. Professional Employer Organization (PEO)
PEO is an HR service provider that collaborates with different businesses to ease out their HR intricacies, such as resources, payroll, and benefits. They offer employee handbooks as an additional service.
Also, PEO extends assistance in creating a handbook and formulating legal policies, which is a great offer for businesses who find HR compliance tough. If you’ve been looking for something similar, choose a PEO that blends well with your business size, needs, and budget.
4. HR Consultant
Seeking assistance from an HR consultant for crafting effective and relevant handbook policies and conducting a final review is a wise move. Here, you must note that these firms charge you a fortune. To get sorted at an affordable rate, find a trusted HR expert or freelancer who can help you out with the employee handbook.
Wrapping Up
An HR handbook’s core purpose is to educate employees about the company culture, compensation, employee benefits, expected employee behavior, and policies. To use this handbook, you’ve to create one with the template provided above.
However, you must note that building this HR handbook requires in-depth knowledge about the company and employment legalities. You cannot afford to miss a policy randomly, making it an overwhelmingly exhausting journey.
The wise way is to turn to robust payroll and HR software to better create and manage all your critical HR policies for the handbook. Now, managing employees’ benefits, expenses, payroll, and more in one place is made easy with HR software!
A decent staff handbook would cost around $1,250 on average, making it a costly affair. To do this affordably, adopt a powerful HR software.
Some of the core points of a staff handbook are the new hire process, company property, company policy, company's mission, promotions and compensation, benefits, and discipline policy.
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