Staff Handbooks, Policies and Procedures
Staff Handbooks, Policies and Procedures
Your Company needs clear and robust rules and procedures to make people management easier. But, just having the procedures on their own is not enough. Increasingly Employment Tribunals expect employers not only to have clear policies and procedures, but also to have communicated them properly to staff and trained managers in how to operate them. Gone are the days when we could rely on employees to simply read the Company Handbook!
You can either have a set of rules, policies and procedures that are designed specifically for your organisational needs, or you can buy generic 'off-the-shelf' policies individually. Either way if you want to rely on a Company rule, policy or procedure, you will need to have taken steps to ensure the employee(s) knew about it. By writing and producing policies, procedures and management guidance that is specifically designed to meet the needs of your business, CHaRM adds real value to the employment arena. Policies are written to give you greatest flexibility where you need it, with clarity throughout to ensure there is no misunderstanding between employer and employee.
"This is perfect. Thank you for amending. They are all now linked in to our handbook which is being released this afternoon. I really appreciate your help and support with these policies and I'm so glad that they've been wrapped up in time for the handbook release."
"Thank you Vicky. That was brilliant!"
"The changes made to the documents were very good and clear, which made everything easy to understand."
Case Study
Our client had an extremely large folder that contained every single policy, procedure or rule that existed within the business. There was no order to the document and new policies were simply added to the bottom of the list as they were required. In disciplinary situations where employees had not followed the relevant process it became clear that, even though employees had signed to say they had read the relevant procedure, they clearly had not. This was not surprising considering that the document ran to nearly 300 pages.
Working with the Directors, CHaRM broke the document down into its component parts and separated all the employment documents and policies into two separate booklets, which were then properly branded. The first document contained relevant information that employees needed to know, such as car parking arrangements, staff purchase discounts and rules, email monitoring etc. There was also a section in this booklet about customer service and how to ensure this was provided both face to face and over the telephone. The booklet also made reference to the more detailed Company employment policies and procedures that were avaialble on the Company's intranet. All employees received a copy of this first document and now it is issued as part of the induction process.
The second document contained those detailed employment policies and procedures which were made accessible to all employees electronically.
The result? A clear distinction between site operating procedures and Company employment rules and policies, which has resulted in fewer disciplinaries for not following Company procedures. The key information required by employees is now provided separately but is also given during induction. This means that when employees sign to say they have read the documentation, we know that this is true!