HR Policy Handbooks Online is designed to create policies for employers throughout the United States. It will present you with many of the issues you need to consider and help you through the process of establishing your organization's policies.
HR Policy Handbooks Online is not intended to provide legal advice of any kind whatsoever and is not a substitute for legal counsel. Therefore, before implementing and publishing policies, you are strongly advised to have them reviewed by legal counsel to ensure that the policies are in compliance with all federal, state, and local laws applicable to your organization.
Keeping Your Handbook Up-to-Date
Like most tools, employee handbooks require regular inspection and maintenance if they are to continue to be useful. You will undoubtedly have to revise your handbook periodically to comply with new regulations and to keep up with changes in your policies and benefits programs. It is a good idea to get in the habit of reviewing your handbook at last once a year to ensure that the policies still accurately reflect dealership practices and that your benefits programs are current. In addition, you should stay abreast of changes in state and federal regulations.
To ensure legal compliance and adequate coverage of employment issues, the final draft of your handbook should be reviewed prior to printing and distribution by an attorney knowledgeable in federal, state, and local employment law and who is familiar with your dealership's operations.
Deciding Which Policies to Include
Because of their legal implications, NADA recommends you carefully consider each of the topic areas below.
Employment-at-Will
Equal Opportunity
Right to Revise
Sexual and Other Unlawful Harassment
Leave Policies
Disciplinary Action and Termination
Payroll Practices
Inspections and Monitoring
Other Policy-Selection Considerations
Employment-at-Will
While creating the policies for your handbook, you will find that you can include an employment-at-will statement in several of them. An employment-at-will statement declares that both the employer and employee have the right to terminate the employment relationship at any time with or without notice or cause.
In some states, exceptions to the employer's at-will right have been established under specific circumstances, such as when discharging an employee violates a public policy. Including an employment-at-will statement can afford protection from claims that an implied contract has been established requiring cause for discharge.
Equal Opportunity
The policies in an employee handbook can help ensure the fair treatment of employees. This has a positive impact on employee morale as well as important legal significance.
Most employers are subject to federal and state laws prohibiting employment discrimination and requiring equal employment opportunity. While specific groups of protected individuals may vary among states, all employers subject to anti-discrimination laws should include an equal opportunity statement.
Right to Revise
Many states consider personnel policies and employee handbooks to be contractual in nature, inviting the contention that any unilateral change of a policy by an employer is unfair or impermissible. Although specifically reserving the right to revise policies may not be required, it is strongly recommended that it be included in your handbook.
WARNING: Employers who include such reservations should state that the right to revise does not apply to the employer's at-will employment policy. The policies listed below include statements regarding the employer's right to revise or cancel policy provisions at any time.
Sexual and Other Unlawful Harassment
It is recommended that all employers adopt a policy (based on local, state, and federal employment discrimination laws) prohibiting the unlawful harassment of employees. While sexual harassment has been widely publicized, harassment based on age, race, color, national origin, or any other protected characteristic is also unlawful.
In addition to a statement of prohibition, it is recommended that a procedure for raising concerns about possible harassment be described so that complaints can be received and investigated outside of the regular supervisory chain when appropriate.
Leave Policies
Most organizations of 50 or more employees are subject to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Further, many states have laws mandating leaves for medical, family-related, and/or pregnancy-related reasons.
Disciplinary Action and Termination
Even if you have reserved your right to terminate an employee at will, you still need to guard against being charged with wrongful discharge. The best way to do so is to ensure that managers and employees understand that certain types of conduct are not allowed, and that infractions may result in disciplinary action, including termination of employment.
Also, by adopting a system of documenting discipline, such as warnings that impose increasingly severe measures for repeat problems, you establish a procedure for adequate documentation of putting the employee on notice for unsatisfactory performance.
On the other hand, it is generally recommended that you not publish a highly detailed list of the only types of misconduct that are unacceptable and the specific penalties for each. It is also a good practice to not state that progressive discipline will always be applied to all forms of misconduct. Such statements would severely limit your flexibility to give individual consideration to the seriousness of the misconduct, the employee's prior performance, the pattern of behavior, length of service, and other factors.
Payroll Practices
Provisions covering compensation and payroll practices must be carefully written because they routinely affect every employee and involve many legal issues.
Inspections and Monitoring
Even if you do not have formal inspection or workplace monitoring programs in effect, you are in a better position to implement such actions if your handbook reserves you that right. Statements expressing your right to inspect and monitor desks, lockers, computers, mail, telephones, and work areas can reduce the effectiveness of a privacy claim.
Other Policy-Selection Considerations
In addition to legally required policy topics, use the following guidelines as you consider which policies to include in your handbook. When you answer these questions, you should be more confident as to whether the policy is right for your dealership.
- Do you often get questions about the policy topic?
- Have you observed that decisions about the policy topic are sometimes inconsistent, or require more discussion than seems necessary?
- Is the policy area a potential legal problem?
- Have employees complained about not understanding your policy in this area?
- Is this a policy topic that is in keeping with your dealership's management philosophy and culture?
- Will having this policy help your dealership achieve its goals?
- Is the policy practical for the dealership's situation and is it cost-justified?
- If you adopt the policy, are you prepared to enforce it consistently and equitably?
Managing Your Handbook
An employee handbook is an ongoing management tool that must be managed properly to retain its effectiveness. A positive employee interpretation is the result of careful planning in creating it, introducing it, and keeping it up-to-date.
Additional Information:
Policy Review Process
Communicating Policies to Employees
Ideas for Communicating the First Handbook
Ideas for Communicating Revised Policies
Employee Acknowledgements
Policy Review Process
Once you start creating policies, consider the following steps as part of the review.
Review for Consistent Tone and Style: The policies you create have been written with a consistency of style and appropriate references to important terms and concepts. If you edit them or add user-defined policies, review them carefully to ensure that they maintain that same style and terminology.
Internal Review: Some dealerships establish a formal personnel-policy committee. Others keep the process less formal, but often run policy issues past selected supervisors or managers who are usually the front line for policy communication and enforcement.
Legal Review: NADA strongly recommends that each policy be reviewed by experienced legal counsel before release to ensure that it complies with the federal, state, and local laws that apply to dealerships.
Communicating Policies to Employees
If It's Your First Handbook: If you have never published an employee handbook before, the initial presentation of the handbook should be carefully planned to ensure a clear understanding of the policies and a positive attitude toward compliance.
New Employees: Always include the employee handbook in the orientation process for new employees. Be sure to include the following items on your New Hire Checklist form:
- Review handbook
- Obtain signed employee acknowledgement form
If you put your employee handbook online, follow up with new employees to be sure they have read it.
If You're Revising Policies: Communicating policy changes is just as important as if this were your first handbook. If, in your original employee handbook, you have already reserved your right to revise, this will be easier.
NOTE: If your original handbook did not include a right-to-revise statement, you may wish to consult with legal counsel before issuing policy revisions, particularly in the areas of employment-at-will, discipline, or termination.
Ideas for Communicating the First Handbook
- Consider Perceptions: If policies in the handbook formalize previously "unofficial" procedures, or change how employees "thought" it worked, give employees time to digest the new handbook and remove feelings of "surprise" by releasing it before its effective date.
- Don't Issue Revisions Too Quickly: It is better to spend more time carefully reviewing the policies and having them reviewed by others (including legal review), than to have to issue revised policies immediately after the original policies are released. Too frequent revisions are more work for you and raise employees' levels of anxiety.
- Don't Hide It: A policy handbook is received more positively if you publicize it, rather than trying to "sneak it in." While some may think that less publicity reduces employees' questions, it is usually just the opposite. Be up front about why you are developing a handbook and talk about its benefits to the employees (more knowledge of policies, consistency across the organization, etc.).
- Give Managers and Supervisors Special Attention: Many policies that you create direct employees to contact a specific person or department about policy questions. However, application of the policies is usually by an employee's immediate supervisor. Making a special effort to educate supervisors on policies, and answering their questions before you release the handbook, ensures better and more consistent implementation.
- Consider How You Will Get Signed Acknowledgement Forms: Develop a method for getting signed acknowledgement forms that will minimize the monitoring, follow-up, and paperwork.
- Make It Fun: If it's appropriate for your organization, put a version of the handbook online or on your intranet. People who use computers will definitely find a computerized handbook more fun to use and, therefore, use it more!
Ideas for Communicating Revised Policies
- If you have given every employee a printed version of the handbook, give them each a copy of the new policy to be filed in it (a good reason to produce your handbook in loose-leaf format).
- If you maintain printed versions that are available to employees centrally, post the revised policy in a central place and notify employees to read it.
- Hold managers responsible for ensuring that the employees who report to them are informed on a timely basis of policy changes.
- Send an e-mail message containing the new policy or announcing the policy change to every employee. Tell them where they can read it (on the bulletin board, in the online handbook, or on your intranet).
- Include a notification about the changed policy on each paycheck or in a separate stuffer in the paycheck envelope.
- Announce policy changes in departmental meetings or the company newsletter. However, this can be less effective because not all employees may be at work or read the newsletter.
Employee Acknowledgements
Most attorneys recommend that you have some method for ensuring that an employee is informed of the dealership's policies. One of the best ways is to ask the employee to sign an acknowledgement form upon receipt of the handbook. This is usually done upon initial employment or when the handbook is issued or changed.
IMPORTANT: Just as with the original employee handbook, most attorneys recommend that you distribute policy changes in such a way that you can later prove, if necessary, that each employee was notified of the change.
A signed acknowledgement form should document the employee's receipt of the handbook and the employee's acknowledgement of the nature of the employment relationship.
Once signed, the form gives you a record of the employee's agreement to comply with handbook policies and should be filed in the employee's personnel file.
Numerous wrongful-termination suits have hinged on the employer's ability to produce the signed and dated acknowledgement form referencing that employment was at-will and that the employee received and accepted the organization's policies.
Keeping Policies Updated
Once you release your handbook, it will need to be reviewed regularly for possible revisions. A semi-annual checkpoint is an excellent time to review all your policies to confirm they are still appropriate.
Changes to personnel policies can result from:
- New or revised federal, state, and local laws and regulations.
- Court decisions affecting employment practices.
- Changes to your organization size, which make you subject to different laws and regulations.
- Changes to your management philosophy, corporate culture, benefits programs, or day-to-day operational needs.
- New approaches to personnel practices and procedures within your industry, geographic area, or the human resources field in general.
- A need to adjust or clarify policy wording.
NOTE: When you revise a policy, be sure to consider carefully whether or not you want to have employees formally acknowledge receipt.