Employee handbook

An employee handbook can help to welcome new staff, gives all staff a handy source of reference, and by formally writing down your policies and providing clear guidelines, you spend less time answering questions and explaining your rules and regulations.

Advice and good practice

• A good handbook will create a great impression for your organisation.
• Take some time to carefully customise the information, to ensure that it is of maximum benefit to you and your employees.
• The employee handbook is a non-contractual guide - therefore it can easily be updated. Check your handbook periodically to ensure that it's kept fully up to date - we would recommend at least an annual review and also whenever there are major changes - eg legal updates, new technology, restructure of the business.
• If you make changes to the employee handbook over time, it is important to know which version was issued to which employee so make sure that you date and/or reference each version.
• Incorporate your logo and as much information about the organisation as possible - this will help your employees to feel part of the organisation.
• Ensure that each employee has a personal copy of the handbook. It is advisable to include this on your induction checklist and ask new employees to sign to confirm that they have received a copy.
• Make copies generally available also, eg on your noticeboard or intranet.
• Use straightforward language. If the handbook is too vague or too technical it will not serve its purpose! Make it easy to understand, clear and user-friendly.
• Be prepared to answer questions regarding the contents of the handbook!

Features

The employee handbook is split into seven main sections:

• About your business
• General terms and conditions
• Your career with us
• Your health, safety and security
• Other rules and general information
• On leaving us
• Our policies and procedures

The employee handbook:

• provides you with a detailed template, containing all you need
• helps you to meet legislative requirements with minimum effort: sections which have legal implications are automatically inserted into the handbook, for example the references to deductions from salary, 'garden leave' and whistle-blowing ; other sections are totally customisable (eg time off for various reasons, jury service, benefits, lost property, security arrangements, parking, internal communications etc)
• allows you to tailor the contents to incorporate terms and information relating to your organisation
• is professionally formatted for you
• is structured so that you can include all of your essential employment policies at the back as an appendix if you wish
• is easy and quick to produce.

Policies and procedures which affect all employees, or all employees in particular groupings should be covered in the handbook. Details specific to individual employees should be set out in their statement of terms and conditions of employment or contract of employment for example, salary/wages, hours of work, holiday, overtime, notice period, job title.

Copies of the handbooks you generate will be stored on our server so you can retrieve previous versions.