Employee Handbooks - Yes or No

yankee49

Once upon a time . . . our company did have employee handbooks. Since I came here about five years ago, they have not issued any. I did come across one copy and have been looking at it to see if policies have changed. Only a couple have been updated since that time. I feel it is important for employees to have access to the policies, procedures and Code of Conduct we expect them to follow.

Your thoughts?

HR in Okla

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 07-18-03 AT 12:07PM (CST)[/font][p]Absolutely, unless you have a very small company with no turnover, I don't know how you can do without having something in writing. There's lots of good info. on this website and others like SHRM to tell you what should be in it.

HRsage

How do you hold your ee's accountable to your policies if they don't have access to them? How do they learn about your policies in order to follow them? We give every new hire a policy handbook that they keep. It's nothing major, but they sign off on it and they are instructed to read it and follow it.

It seems to me you need something that shows that the ee knows your policies and is expected to follow them.

Just my thoughts.

Human Resources Manager

I agree. Employees need to know what policy is in order to follow it. It is also extremely help to have a handbook with policies to point to in UI claims, EEO claims, and things of this nature, just be sure that the policies are reviewed by a good attorney, and kept updated.

Don D

Some companies have Policy Manuals which codify policies but are not employee handbooks. There are pros and cons for having them or not. We have them for hourly but not for salaried. Our corporation isn't exactly small - has almost 50,000 employees in the U.S. alone. To your question; the person in charge of HR at your company should find and retrieve all old issues of various employee handbooks. In the shape you find yourself, they're probably more danger than help, both to the employee and the company. If your company intends not to have a handbook, no old, obsolete and misleading copies should be floating around.

HR in Okla

Don, how do you manage to do HR for a 50,000 employee company, and post all this stuff on the forum? We all need your time-management training too.

Don D

I hope you ask the question with a happy face on. The corporation has 50k employees, not my facility. I manage the overall HR/Safety functions for a facility of just over 200. Feel better now? But if you feel I post too often, I will cut back.

Don D

I hope you ask the question with a happy face on. The corporation has
50k employees, not my facility. I manage the overall HR/Safety
functions for a facility of just over 200. Feel better now? I would think you would be more concerned with the content of the posts rather than some odd analysis of their number. If you think I post too often, I will cutback. If you feel my posts are off base on a regular basis, I'd like to hear that too. I have thick skin. x:-)

HR in Okla

Don, this is why email is a problem, you can't see the expression or hear the tone. Yes, I asked with a smile, but somewhat seriously too. It takes a lot of time to read and post very much, but it's worth it to help and encourage one another. Don't get defensive on us! And don't stop posting! Everyone says you give lots of great advice and information, including me!

hrbanker

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 07-21-03 AT 05:17PM (CST)[/font][p]Don, don't stop posting! You always have good advice garnered from years of experience. My guess is you've probably been posting on the forum since it started. I only discovered this site within the last year and it took a long time to come out of my shell and actually write something.

As for handbooks... absolutely necessary! We have a personnel policies manual that all managers get and an employee handbook that every employee signs for. Once a year we update them. When an employee says "I didn't know that." I can say, it's in the handbook.

HR in Okla

Could you explain a little about the differences between your personnel policies and employee handbook? I published a 100 page manual we called a handbook, gave everyone a copy a couple of years ago, but I think it's really more of a policy manual. It's too cumbersome and expensive to give every new employee or to reprint every time there's a change.

HRQ

We rely on them heavily, and I refer to the pages of the handbook dealing specifically with reason for term on Unemployment claims. I also refer to specific pages of the handbook when writing disciplinary documents and refer to the date the employee signed the document - kind of tactfully makes clear that the employee SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER than to do whatever they did.

We edit the handbook annually. It's a huge process, as I tend to save stuff up all year and pull the big fat file to refer during the edit process, but it is absolutely worth it.

yankee49

Thank you all for your input. It has helped me trememdously. This website has been a life saver.

scottorr

Our company decided not to give out handbooks, instead we give out policy binders, that way when a policy changes we don't need to send for reprinting, ees only have to replace the changed policy. Initially it was a pain but in the long run it saves us a lot of time and prevents a lot of duplication. Just another point of view.

HR in Okla

Actually, that was my intention. We put the full size manual in a binder for supervisors, so we could change out sheets when there were policy changes. (and we have done that) But we printed a version of the same thing "shrunk down" to be in a handbook size; however, we soon ran out of them plus they became outdated. My challenge has been to come up with a user-friendly, cheap to produce, handbook for the employees. I have some ideas, but would love to hear how others do it.

HRQ

We produce our own. We are not a big company (400 employees) but we have an internal print shop. It's actually one person who has a small room full of paper supplies, a binder of "originals" and a heavy duty copier.

We create the document in MS Word. The "copier guy" makes the handbooks on 11X17 paper, folds them in half "booklet style" and uses a special stapler to staple along hte fold.

Production is cheap: cost of a few cases of paper, and his time.

The handbooks aren't fancy - black and white, no pretty paper, but they get done and are easy to edit.

HR in Okla

Sounds good, keeps it simple. How many pages is yours? We used to print up our own and put them in a report cover. That worked fine when it was about 25 pages.

HRQ

28 two-sided pages, which means 14 pages of 11X17 folded in half. I anticipate the size growing a bit, as my "Handbook Revisions" file is growing thicker every day I read the Forum. I imagine I'll find areas that can be consolidated when I do the actual revision, too.

Don D

My last job was in a union environment, two plants, 350-400 ees total. We did have handbooks for bargaining unit members, all of whom were hourly. We did not have 'employee handbooks' for the remainder, all of whom were salaried, some hourly, some non-exempt, some exempt. Like Scott, we had large three ring binders of policy and procedure for this second group, so every one of them had immediate access to policies. We issued and re-issued these with a bit of perhaps 'anal' precision. HR managed the process and made up enough 3 ring binders (rather large) for each of about 30 managers to have a 'departmental copy'. We had signature sheets where the manager had to sign for the binder and the sheet contained an admonition to them that they are responsible not only for having and keeping up with the book, but also making it available to their direct reports upon request. We simply did not want to manage the process of issuing and updating a hundred or so of these books. Then when it came time for annual editing and re-issue we (HR) physically went around and reissued the entire book or parts of it, took custody of the obsolete books and materials, and had the managers acknowledge receipt of the new materials. This worked real well. But, talk about anal, when I worked for the State, they would (with regularity) send the manager in charge a huge box of revised sections and the manager would spend a week going around pulling obsolete materials from ee handbooks and having updates inserted in the handbooks, gathering signatures and EVEN RETURNING the pile of obsolete pages to the State Office as proof that we did what we were told to do.

HR in Okla

I recall having some of this discussion before and I have done what Don D suggested as far as having the binders for supervisors. We also have several in HR available for checkout. We've been having new employees sign an acknowledgement form that they know they are responsible for following policy and they have access to the information. Few actually check them out.

With my next revision I plan to follow Don's advice and go around personally collecting the old ones and replacing so I can be sure they are all current.

Thanks

scottorr

Our binders are huge but we still manage to get them to all (now) 450 ees. We utilize our administrative staff for putting them together. We make sure we always have ten extra on hand is case we do a mass hiring. We keep our binders very organized. Each department has their own section and every policy within each dept is assigned a chronilogical number. Whenever a new policy goes out we require every ee to sign that they have received, read and understand the policy. Each administrative assistant from each department is responsible for maintaining a log of signed policies receipts generated by their department. HR is of course the largest section.

HR in Okla

Wow, you must not have as much turnover as we do. What you are describing sound like a true policies and procedures manual for the whole company. Our CEO is pushing for such a manual, but only to have in each department, not to give everyone.

Most employees want to know the basic rules of conduct, dress code, when payday is, what the holidays are and the vacation policy. Beyond that, they won't read it. That's why I'm trying to get to an abbreviated version they will actually read.

mmurnahan

Yes. Our organization believes they are a must. We recently updated ours to reflect the company policies, and practices. we require each new employee (on their first day) to sign a receipt that they received the handbook. The signed acknowledgement becomes part of their personnel file. We also meet with the new employees (each Monday) and review selected parts of the Handbook that we feel are most important. It is the responsibiliy of the employee to read the handbook in it's entirety.

HR in Okla

What type of organization/industry are you with?