The answer would be “Yes” and now more so than ever, with the problems employers face with employee issues.
One mistake that employers will make is thinking that this manual needs to be 150 pages thick naming anything that they could possibly think of that may need to be addressed at sometime during some employees work time with them. Actually an employee manual can be very simple, our is just nine pages long, but the important thing is that it discusses the important policies of our practices. When you have an employee manual that spells out clearly the most important human resources issues then you have laid down the foundation of how your practice is set up and run. You need to develop your policy manual on the 80-20 rule, where you define policies for the most common areas that need to be addressed, which accounts for 80% of the issues, and leave the 20% or the “rarely” issues out or you could end up with a volume of encyclopedias if you tried to cover and make a policy for every single thing that could come up. The most common items that need to be addressed in your manual would include: an equal opportunity statement, types of employment you offer and their descriptions, employee hours, pay periods and reviews. Lunch breaks, salary and wages, Holidays, vacation, sick days, special time off, disability, bereavement and maternity leave. What to do in emergency situations, smoking policy and how to file a grievance, tardiness and absenteeism. The article listed below will give you a good start on developing a simple employee policy manual, pick what applies to your practice and think about the policies that you want to make sure your employees know about and need to follow. When each new employee is hired at our office they get a copy of our personnel policy manual to read and keep, along with a form that they sign that states that they have read the manual, understand it and will adhere to the polices in it, which is kept in their employee file. If ever a problem comes up that is addressed in our manual, I just get out the form and show them that they had read and understood it at the time of employment and I will have them read it again, sign and date the form again as written proof that we are compliant in working with our employees to make sure they understand what is expected of them, which has been very beneficial to us when we have had to let someone go.
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