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: Charles A. Krugel, Labor & Employment Law, HR Law

Employment Policies and Handbooks-To Be or Not To Be, That is the Question, Part 2

By charlesakrugel

This post continues the discussion that began with my prior post.

After deciding whether to have employment policies and which policies to have, a business should determine what form these policies should take. Such forms may include an electronic document, a written memo, a multi-page document, a bound manual, or a combination of these. Alternatively, a business might choose to put nothing in writing.

Essentially, the decision comes down to company size and complexity and purposes of the policies. The larger and more complex a company is, the greater the need for written employment policies addressing a large number and range of issues; i.e., a larger document. The smaller and less complex a business is means that it will probably have fewer issues to address, and it might not even have to put all of its in policies writing.

However, even a small company in a highly regulated or complex industry, like nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals or energy, will probably have to address a greater number of employment issues via written policies; e.g., safety, hygiene, record retention and destruction, and regulatory agency reporting. In short, the complexity of a company and its industry is just as good of an indicator of what form employment policies should take as is the number of employees in that business.

What the policies are intended to address is another important indicator of which policies to implement and put in writing. That is, purpose is a good predictor of what policies are needed and their form. For example, if a 20-year old business has never addressed workplace violence issues, then it probably doesn’t need to address this issue via written policies. Or, at most, it might not need to exhaustively address this issue in writing. However, a two-year old business that is undergoing rapid growth, and is hiring from a population that’s at-risk to violence, might need to be more proactive and address workplace violence at the outset. In this workplace violence example, company size and industry complexity are less of an indicator of policy needs and form than the intended purpose of the policy. In short, a company shouldn’t seek to address issues it hasn’t encountered, unless it could reasonably expect to encounter these issues in the near future, or it?s required by law or regulation to address them.

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Full post as published by Charles A. Krugel, Labor & Employment Law, HR Law on April 02, 2008 (boomark / email).