Contents of an Employee Handbook
Every employee handbook should contain certain components. Federal, state, and local laws will also apply to your employee handbook. So, make sure to understand the laws when drafting your employee handbook.
With these ideas in mind every employee handbook should contain some or all of the following contents:
- Title page (with effective date)
- Table of contents – with page numbers
- Body (this is the "meat and potatoes" of the employee handbook, which we’ll go over in more detail on the next page):
- General information about the company/Mission Statement
- At-will Employee Statement
- Hiring Rules
- Anti-Harassment & Anti-Discrimination clauses
- Compensation Structure for Employees
- Hours of Operation
- Leave
- Performance Reviews
- Benefits
- Health & Safety Policy
- Anti-Violence Policy
- Privacy in the Workplace
- Workplace Conduct
- Disciplinary Policy
- Index
- Acknowledgement Page – page for each employee to sign in acknowledgment of the employee handbook
This only gives some of the basic policies implemented by employers. There are many different types of policies to choose from and each employee handbook must be tailored to each company’s operations. Also, as companies grow and change, so must their employee handbooks.
Next, we’ll go over the above-listed contents contained in an employee handbook in more detail.