Understanding the Importance of Drafting the Employee Handbook Rightly

Employee handbooks are a great way for organizations to state their policies vis-à-vis employee behavior. On the one hand, they are a simple and reliable guide to letting employees and other people connected to the organization in one or another way about many aspects of the organization’s culture. On the other, employee handbooks also insulate the organization against undesirable legal issues. They can protect the organization’s management in case an employee files a lawsuit against it.

In many instances, it is not unnatural to view the employee handbook as a kind of employee contract. This is why a loosely and vaguely termed employee handbook does more damage than good to the organization. So, an employee handbook should be a clear guide as to what the organization expects from its employees and how employees should go about complying with it.

A good employee handbook should be clear in its terms and should leave no one in any doubt about the meaning of any aspects of it, small or big. It should have disclaimers wherever and whenever necessary, so that when in doubt, this can be referred to.

Handbooks have been evolving

Of late, the purpose and scope of employee handbooks have been expanding due to a number of factors, changing business needs and environment being the primary ones among them. While the employee handbook should be clear about what is going to go into it; it should also be flexible in one aspect: when it comes to accommodating the important changes that keep happening from time to time in the business and social environment. All the latest developments that take place in the business and corporate world should be properly reflected in the employee handbook.

As employment practices evolve, the employee handbook should too, along with them. It should reflect pan-organizational processes and developments from time to time, as these evolve. Just as employee practices change over time; the employee handbook, being a reflection of these, should echo these changes.

Get to learn the nuances of employee handbooks

Want to understand what it takes to draft legally solid and sustainable employee handbooks? Want to explore what challenges and issues have emerged or are likely to emerge for 2017? A webinar that is being organized by TrainHR, a popular provider of professional trainings for the human resources industry, will be providing the answers.

To understand the details and intricacies of drafting handbooks that are tenable and complete and to get clarity on how to do this; please enroll for this webinar by logging on to http://www.trainhr.com/control/w_product/~product_id=701798LIVE?abilogic-seo.

Ronald Adler, who is the president-CEO of Laurdan Associates, Inc., a veteran owned, human resource management consulting firm specializing in HR audits, employment practices liability risk management, HR metrics and benchmarking, strategic HR-business issues and unemployment insurance, and a co-developer of the Employment-Labor Law Audit (the nation’s leading HR auditing and employment practices liability risk assessment tool, will be the speaker at this webinar.

Viewing this webinar, its entirety qualifies for a recertification credit hour that may be counted toward SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP recertification from SHRM.

Credit is awarded based on the actual educational time spent in the program.

This webinar has been approved for 1.5 HR (General) recertification credit hours toward aPHR, PHR, PHRca, SPHR, GPHR, PHRi and SPHRi recertification through HR Certification Institute (HRCI).

Clarify on crucial aspects of employee handbooks

Ronald will discuss the critical components of an employee handbook in this webinar. He will explain the importance of having an employee handbook that is a perfect representation of the organization’s culture and policies. He will describe how a poorly or ambiguously worded employee handbook can set the organization backwards by drawing it into legal tangles.

He will explain how handbooks need to be designed, so that they serve their purposes of enhancing the employment brand, playing a key role in employee recruitment and retention, enhancing employee relations, employee morale, and productivity, contributing to uniform and consistent application, interpretation, and enforcement of organizational policies and rules, protecting the organization against claims of improper employee/supervisor conduct, and reducing the organization's exposure to employment related liabilities.

During the course of this webinar, the speaker will cover the following areas:

• Key employee handbook issues in 2017
• A review of the NLRB's recent memorandum on employee handbooks
• How organizations can reduce the gap between policy issuance and effective implementation.
• Review the basics of employee handbook development
• Discuss the expanding purposes and scope of employee handbooks
• Learn the dimensions of critical handbook policies
• Understand the framework of employee handbook audits activities.