What is the Employee Handbook
An employee handbook is a document that contains your company’s operating procedures, policies, and expectations. It spells out what is expected of employees and what rights both employee and employer have, usually on their first day at work (as part of the onboarding process).
Why it is needed
An employee handbook is a compilation of policies, procedures, working conditions and behavioral expectations in your business. It should include a company-wide policy statement designed to govern the business.
It’s an opportunity to create clarity around policies and expectations for employees and management. A well-written manual fosters a stronger, more positive company culture where policies are clearly defined and implemented consistently and uniformly.
Individual departments may have additional specific protocols or procedures, but the primary purpose of an employee handbook is to provide a solid foundation for the overall business.
When should be created
Ideally, a handbook should be in place from the very beginning of a company, but it is never too late to develop one. However, creating an employee handbook is not a one-time process. A handbook is a living document that must be maintained consistently to ensure it strengthens your business practices and to ensure your policies stay current with the law.
Using a handbook to support HR compliance is important because it helps reduce the risk of future costly legal action.
Mission, Vision and Values
A employee handbook helps communicate your company culture from your mission and values. In fact, everything an enterprise does should be rooted in these three things. After all, these are the basic goals and standards of your business.
Ensure company policies are consistent
A handbook not only provides expectations for employees, but it also creates a framework to guide management and leadership. Outlining what employees expect from management helps ensure that the entire company is working in the same direction.
Without a handbook, each line manager might do what they see fit rather than following clearly defined and unified company-wide expectations. In other words, the handbook ensures alignment from one manager to another, so employees in different departments are treated equally and policies are properly enforced.
Conclusion
Therefore, the goal and significance of a good employee handbook is to improve the company’s management of employee relations, avoid labor conflicts, and establish harmonious labor relations.
Therefore, each enterprise should draw up and create an employee handbook that belongs to the enterprise itself according to its own scale, management characteristics, industry characteristics, and employment methods and types, which is more conducive to the healthy growth of the enterprise and is crucial to the development of the enterprise.
