HR Policies
Ensure you have effective HR policies for your business and employees
What’s obvious to you may not be obvious to your employees
Most businesses start off with 4 key HR policies: Disciplinary, Grievance, Equality and Health & Safety. More recently, an additional must-have is a set of GDPR policies.
As your business grows, new documents may need to be introduced or your current ones updated. For instance, a pregnancy will require a maternity policy, and a jury service summons will need an absence policy.
We can review and update existing policies, and provide additional templates for areas where your business is currently unprotected.
No HR policies at all?
Where you need a full set of new HR policies, we recommend implementing an employee handbook.
Types of HR Policies
We offer a wide range of HR policies, including:
Essential Policies
Your business should have:
- Absence Policy
- Disciplinary Policy and Procedure
- Equality and Diversity Policies
- GDPR Policies
- Grievance Policy and Procedure
- Health and Safety Policy
Standard Policies
These may apply to your business:
- Adoption
- Anti-bribery and Corruption
- Communication and IT Usage
- Home Working
- Flexible Working
- Maternity
- Parental Leave
- Paternity
- Professional Conduct
- Shared Parental Leave
- Social Media Usage
- Whistleblowing
- Working Time Regulation
We have many more policies that will cover most business requirements…
Bespoke Policies
Whilst the essential and standard policies cover most business scenarios, you may also need to include bespoke policies specific to your business.
If you let us know your requirements, we’ll work with you to create the policies you need.
Key Service Features
for HR Policies
Updated HR policies to ensure they meet your business needs and UK employment law.
Provision of additional and bespoke documents, as well as specific templates to support your business needs.
Confidence that you have everything you need to make employee management easier.
Support with rolling out new or revised HR policies to your employees.
See our HR Policies FAQ for more details
What our clients say…
“You have made the whole process seem so easy when it can be quite painful.
The service, feedback and communications are all very professional, quick, friendly and timely. It’s a pleasure working with you.”
Tiny Casey
Executive Assistant, Micasa
“I can honestly say, our HR consultant is part of our team.
At every level and on every time of asking, our consultant has been professional, 100% up-to-date and also 100% correct in all of their recommendations.”
John Spence
MD & Owner, Megaflatables
“As a small business owner with developing needs and challenges, it’s been invaluable having a trusted partner on hand to guide and advise us.
Lighter HR gives us confidence to make clear, concise decisions.”
Ian Tomalin-Hall
CEO, Grammatik
Get In Touch
Speak with an HR Expert Today
Chat through your requirements for HR policies or any other HR matter with one of our expert consultants to understand the actions you can take and how we can help.
HR Policies FAQ
There are five key policies that we recommend to every business.
You are required to have a written statement on how you’ll deal with disciplinary and grievance issues so these are two policies that you absolutely need. Then, we suggest that you have an absence policy as absence issues are common in businesses, and it’s important for you to set out the rules surrounding all of the difference absence types (holiday, sickness, compassionate leave etc.).
Also, you’ll need an equality policy which we strongly recommend as it helps establish your business as an equal opportunities employer. It makes it clear that you do not tolerate discriminatory behaviour of any type and is the start of setting the tone of your organisation.
Finally, you’ll need a set of policies regarding GDPR for HR to ensure you are compliant with managing personal information about your employees. There could very well be additional policies that are specific to your sector (Safeguarding Policy in a childcare setting as an example) and we can give you guidance on these as well.
Yes.
Whilst having HR policies is necessary, they don’t fulfil your legal obligations for provision of HR documentation.
You are required to confirm in writing some key elements of an employee’s terms and conditions of employment with you, and many organisations use this as an opportunity to also add some additional obligations around the employment relationship (confidentiality requirements, intellectual property and post termination restrictions). So, you’ll probably also want an Employment Contract.
Something else you may want to consider is having a complete Employee Handbook rather than a set of individual policies. An employee handbook contains all of the policies mentioned above but also has lots more. It covers all of the various types of family leave, policies on whistle blowing and anti-corruption and more. We can discuss all options when you contact us.
When it comes to implementing policies, the process should be fairly straight forward but this will depend on the level of change that you’re achieving with these policies.
If the policies are really just confirming statutory rights and obligations then you can simply inform employees of their existence. You don’t need to go through any consultation process as they are simply confirming the law.
However, if you’re implementing policies that change how things are currently done in your organisation then you may need to go through a consultation process.
We’ll discuss this with you when you speak with us and let you know what to expect and how we can help you.
If you have further questions, call us on 0203 319 1649 and we can go through the options available to you.