The staff handbook establishes a professional relationship between the employer and the employed – an essential in any commercial enterprise. The handbook sets out company procedures, company policies and company working practices to create a structured work environment. Whether you choose to use software to create your staff handbook, use pre-determined templates or work from scratch, there are certain inclusions that will always be necessary.
Disclaimer
It should be made very clear that the staff handbook does not constitute a contract of employment – those are issued to each individual employee.
Mission Statement
The company goals and mission statement should be clear and concise to engender a sense of belonging and good moral in employees.
Employee Definitions
If you have a mixed workforce of permanent, contracted, full-time and part-time, definitions of each type should be very clear. Most
The Working Week
A clearly defined working week is an essential inclusion in the company handbook. The week should be defined as the seven-day period over which you make payroll calculations – not just Monday to Friday, because you need to have the flexibility of weekend working and overtime.
Policies of general working practices
A handbook should clearly communicate the basic policies of employment. These will cover pay periods and frequency, time sheets or time recording, dress code, use of company equipment, data privacy and any other general policy that is relevant to all staff.
Holidays and Leave Entitlements
These are best covered in a separate section to the general policies. All types of leave entitlements need to be detailed. This includes personal holidays, bank and national holidays, sick leave, parental leave (maternity and paternity), compassionate (bereavement) and jury duty. Qualifications for the leave entitlements should be detailed, along with restrictions (such as not leaving a department without staff).
Rules of conduct
Generally, this section of your company handbook will contain the statements about sexual harassment and discrimination polices, but might also include statements about bullying and general policies regarding staff conduct. It should also set out how complaints can be progressed.
Staff benefits
This should be restricted to benefits that are applicable to all employees. Discretionary benefits available to specific staff should be contained in contracts of employment.
Disciplinary Policies
It is important to be clear when detailing disciplinary procedures in the staff handbook but, absolute statements should be avoided as this can tie you into a prescribed plan of action. Employees should feel they will be judged on a case by case basis and policies should not leave them in fear of disproportionate punishments. Disciplinary policies should also include a disclaimer stating that anything considered detrimental to the company or bad behaviour might attract a punishment – not just the specific policies listed in the handbook.
This last point demonstrates that the production of a staff handbook needs attention to detail. The entire process can be made easier with software which will provide pre-populated templates of suitable words and texts that can be customised, helpful hints as you progress, as well as enabling the handbook to be kept up to date efficiently and quickly.
Sara is an IT Specialist at BrightContracts. For more information, visit www.brightcontracts.ie.