Employee Handbook

Support from HR experts to create or update your employees’ handbook

Your employees aren’t mind-readers so you’ll need to guide them on your business practices and policies!

An employee handbook makes managing your team more efficient. It also helps everyone focus on their job by providing a single point of reference for new and existing employees (to see the rules that apply to them) and managers (to deal with situations consistently).

Furthermore, your employee handbook should reflect your business in tone, style and content to help new employees understand what working for you is like. It also helps ensure you have in place the correct legal policies.

  • If you already have an employee handbook but you think it’s out of date, we’ll review what you have, let you know the gaps and then make the required changes to the guidance and policies. The employee handbook review is free and non-obligatory.
  • If you do not have an employee handbook or want to replace your existing one, we will provide you with a new handbook that is tailored to your business needs and culture.

No matter what your employee handbook requirements are, we’ll work with you to understand and meet them.

Free Review of Your
Employee Handbook

If you have an existing employee handbook, we will review it for free.

We’ll send you a detailed report giving insight into the good bits, where it needs improvement, and how we can help.

There’s no charge for the report or obligation for you to use our recommendations or our services.

Simply attach your handbook to the contact form, then we’ll review and send you the report.

Employee Handbook - Support Options - Lighter HR

Support Options for Employee Handbook

Creating a New Employee Handbook

If you don’t have an employee handbook, we will work with you to create a new handbook tailored to your business needs and culture. We can even help you manage the roll out to your employees.

Updating your Existing Handbook

If you already have an employee handbook that needs to be updated, we’ll review it for free, advise you on the gaps and make all necessary guidance and policies changes.

Call us to discuss your free, non-obligatory handbook review.

Key Service Features
for Employee Handbook

Free review of your existing employee handbook, by an experienced HR professional, providing you with a report on areas to be updated and an estimated time to make the updates.

A comprehensive handbook that ensures employees know the rules and supports induction for new employees.

A document, with a strong reflection of your business and current employment legislation, to help managers to manage employees consistently.

Support with rolling out new or revised employee handbook to your employees.

See our Employee Handbook FAQ for more details

What our clients say…
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Employee Handbook FAQ

I’ve already got an employee handbook, can you just update that?

This is definitely an option and we can start by doing a complimentary review of the employee handbook you’re already using.

The review will give you some ideas as to what we would recommend changing and we’ll also let you know how much it would cost for us to make those changes.

Sometimes, when we look at a handbook, we’ll have to tell the client that it will be more cost effective for them to use our template rather than update what they are using. This is particularly true if there are a lot of missing policies or if the handbook has been written by a lawyer and the language is a little impenetrable!

What is included in an employee handbook?

Our employee handbooks are tailored to your business and contain two key sections: Guidance and Policies.

Guidance: designed to be highly accessible, this section highlights information that’s specific to your business and answers common employee questions like ‘What should I do if I’m ill?’ and ‘How do I book holiday?’

Policies: contains everything you need to meet your legal obligations, including coverage of key employee events. Absence Policy, Disciplinary Policy and Grievance Policy are also detailed. Most people will only refer to this section when they have a problem or face a very particular situation.

What process will you go through to create our employee handbook?

We advise clients not to have an Employee Handbook that is contractual as that creates a lot of unnecessary work in the future as you’ll need to consult with employees every time you want to make a change. Given that the handbook won’t be contractual, the roll-out process is quite easy. You’ll issue the handbook to your team, invite their comments and questions and that’s that!

We do suggest that you ask employees to sign to say that they have received and read the handbook and that you review the handbook on an annual basis to make sure that it continues to reflect your business practices and any changes in employment law.

What benefits are there for the employer in having an employee handbook?

Having a single point of reference where employees can see the rules that apply to them and that managers can use to ensure they deal with things consistently means that everyone is able to focus on the job they are employed to do.

It also helps new employees to settle into their new roles quickly and makes sure that you have the legal policies in place that you need.

Furthermore, your Employee Handbook should be a reflection of your business. The tone, style and content will help the new employees to understand what it’s really like to work in your company.

There are lots of employee handbooks templates available on the internet, can I just use one of those?

Of course you can but we’d recommend that you don’t.

The challenge with template documents is that they aren’t tailored for your business. You’ll likely see policies in the template that you don’t know whether you need or not – can you just delete them? It could be that you want to make changes to that template but how will you know that the changes you make don’t breach employment law?

When it comes to an employee handbook, we really do think it’s worth speaking to an expert, getting a handbook that’s created for you and one that you really understand and would be happy to stand behind. Your employee handbook will set out the rules that you will enforce across your workforce and it’s likely to be a key document if you do end up dealing with employee disputes.

Is the employee handbook the only document I need?

An employee handbook on it’s own won’t mean that you meet your legal obligations as an employer when it comes to provision of documentation.

You must provide employees with written confirmation of the key elements of their employment with you on the day on which they join your business, and this can be a good opportunity to also set out some other contractual obligations that you’d like to enforce (post-termination restrictions, copyright, intellectual property protection, etc.). So, you might want to think about an Employment Contract if this isn’t something that you already have.

We offer a Contract and Handbook package at a discount price which provides you the contract and policies that you need. Contact us to find out more.

What process is required to roll out or make changes to an employee handbook?

If you already have an employee handbook then the first thing that we’ll look to ascertain is whether or not that handbook is contractual. If it is, then you’ll need to follow a consultation process when you implement a new handbook.

If your handbook isn’t contractual or if you don’t have a contractual handbook then the process should be quite straight forward if all you’re doing is documenting policies and procedures that are already happening in practice. However, if you’re going to use your handbook to change things around, introduce new rules and procedures, and remove some old working practices, then you’ll need to consult anyway as you’ll be changing things that are custom and practice.

When you work with us to create an employee handbook, we’ll guide you through the process of rolling it out.

If you have further questions, call us on 0203 319 1649 and we can go through the options available to you.