Good reasons why your Company should create its own Employee Handbook in 2019:

1. Most employees want to know what the rules are, and will follow the rules if told what they are, so an employee handbook is a good place to explain your standard rules.

    

2. Most employees are proud of their workplaces and want to know more about the Company and its history, and a Handbook is a good place to put this information.

    

3. Handbooks don't cost much to produce, but can yield high employee satisfaction by opening up lines of communication.

    

4. An employee handbook helps to communicate important company policies and procedures about issues such as harassment, discrimination, payroll practices, and other personnel issues. If your company is covered by FMLA, an employee handbook is also a good place to include notices of FMLA rights.

    

5. An employee handbook notifies employees about performance expectations, and provides good evidence that the employee knew that certain conduct could result in discipline or discharge.

    

6. An employee handbook provides important information about benefit programs which are available to employees, and what steps are necessary to obtain those benefits. Federal law also requires that employees be provided with Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs) for certain benefit plans, and these are easy to include in your Handbook.

    

7. An employee handbook saves management time, because it answers common employee questions about how the Company operates.

    

8. An employee handbook informs employees about the limits of supervisory authority, which may limit the liability of the Company where a bad supervisor tries to engage in conduct which could expose the Company to lawsuits.

    

9. An employee handbook helps the Company to communicate its core values to its workforce.

    

10. An employee handbook helps to protect confidential Company information, by clearly informing employees of their duty to safeguard such information.

     

11. An employee handbook allows the Company to explain the reasoning behind the adoption of certain policies, which helps employees to understand certain policies which otherwise might create dissension or unhappiness (such as nepotism policies).

     

12. An employee handbook assists employees in avoiding conflicts of interest which could be harmful to the Company, by identifying the types of situations which can lead to such conflicts of interest.

     

13. An employee handbook can assist the Company in obtaining valuable upward feedback from its employees about problems in their work areas which might lead to reduced morale, lowered productivity or increased turnover if not addressed promptly.

     

14. In today's litigation-prone society, an employee handbook can help to prove that you explained your rules to your workers, and this can assist in all sorts of litigation (including litigation with an unhappy customer, or an injured visitor, or one of your own employees).

     

15. If your company is a government contractor, an employee handbook is a good place to include certain required notices to your employees about your EEO Policies and your AAPs.