Drafting your own employee handbook can be time-consuming and expensive, especially when lawyers are involved. Using basic templates might be tempting, but they rarely cover everything you need to address. They’re also unlikely to include all federal, state and local laws that apply to your employees. Many companies wonder whether they can save time or money using employee handbook software.
The answer is yes—as long as that software is designed to create customized employee handbooks that comply with state, local, and federal employment laws. SixFifty’s employee handbook generator can help you create your own custom handbooks: it’s fast, easy and cost-effective.
Here’s what you need to know about employee handbook software.
What Is Employee Handbook Software?
Employee handbook software is a platform that generates and maintains a compliant employee handbook by combining attorney-drafted policy language with logic that adjusts for federal, state, and local requirements—rather than starting from a blank document or a static template.
How employee handbook software works
A business answers questions about its size, locations, and policies; the software applies that information to a rules engine covering the relevant jurisdictions and generates a handbook (and any needed state addenda) built from pre-approved policy language. From there, it tracks legal changes in the background and updates the affected sections, or flags them for review, as laws change.
Employee handbook software vs. static templates
A template is a snapshot: accurate the day it’s downloaded, then frozen. It also can’t adjust itself to your specific states and headcount—you have to know which sections apply and manually verify thresholds yourself. Software applies that logic automatically and keeps adjusting it as your business and the law change.
Employee handbook software vs. hiring an employment lawyer
An employment lawyer brings judgment a rules engine can’t replicate for unusual or high-risk situations, but each update is a new engagement, with its own cost and turnaround time. Software handles the routine, recurring maintenance work—tracking law changes and updating standard policy language—which frees up attorney time for the situations that actually need it.
When does a business need employee handbook software?
A few common triggers: hiring in a second state, adding a remote employee in a new location, crossing an employee-count threshold that activates a new legal requirement, or simply finding that manual updates keep slipping past the law’s effective date. Any one of these is a sign that manual management is starting to cost more time than it saves.
Why do you Need an Employee Handbook?
Employee handbooks serve several important purposes. First, they introduce your employees to the company during the onboarding process, including your mission statement, company culture, and values. They also set expectations for your employees, from how to treat colleagues and clients to how to dress or handle grievances.
Next, employee handbooks act as a guide to what workers can expect from their managers and company leadership. They inform employees of benefits, company policies, and procedures.
Finally, employee handbooks protect the company. Not only should they comply with all state, federal and local laws, they can limit your liability as a company. Should employee disputes arise, your handbook is a powerful tool to prove that you acted in compliance with all applicable laws.
Employee Handbook Builder Software
While one-size-fits-all employee handbook templates can’t quite cover everything an employee handbook must contain—especially when state- and locally-specific laws apply—employee handbook builder software provides a good alternative to having an attorney draft a handbook from scratch.
There are dozens of companies who offer employee handbook software, but not all are created equally. It’s important that you review the features of each before you choose a software tool: some may only generate basic text without state-specific features, while others might be static and therefore useless when laws change.
When you’re looking for the right employee handbook software, make sure it includes these benefits:
Legal expertise
The number one feature your employee handbook software needs? Legal expertise from real lawyers. Every state has different employment laws, which can impose additional obligations on employers. Your handbook needs to comply with all applicable federal laws as well as state and local laws—and unless lawyers have weighed in on the research and generation, you could leave your company open to liability.
State-specific handbook generation
Next, your handbook software needs to be able to create handbooks for every state, as well as any specific, local laws. This is crucial if you plan to hire out-of-state employees—you don’t want to risk running afoul of the law, nor should you have to redo the entire handbook every time you hire someone in a new state.
Automatically generated
Employee handbook software should automatically generate handbooks for you. This saves time and ensures all of the required elements are present, instead of you needing to decide what’s required and what isn’t.
Updates when the law changes
Finally, an employee handbook generator should notify you when the law changes, so you can update your handbooks accordingly. Otherwise, you run the risk of relying on outdated laws. This can open your company up to liability.
Multi-state compliance
Generates the correct combination of federal, state, and local policy language for every state where you have employees, rather than requiring a separate manual review for each one.
Automatic legal updates
Applies (or flags for review) new legal requirements to the relevant section of the handbook as soon as a tracked law changes, closing the gap between a law’s effective date and the handbook catching up.
State and local policy generation
Builds the specific addendum each state or city requires—rather than a single blended policy—so state-specific concepts that don’t exist elsewhere, like California’s daily overtime rule, aren’t lost in translation.
Employee acknowledgement tracking
Records who received which version of the handbook and when they signed off, creating a timestamped history that’s useful if a policy is ever disputed.
Version control and audit history
Keeps a clear record of what changed, when, and why, so you can always answer which version of the handbook was in effect on a given date.
HRIS / payroll integration (if applicable)
Some handbook platforms connect to HRIS or payroll systems to sync employee counts and locations automatically, which keeps the jurisdiction logic accurate as headcount changes without manual re-entry. Not every platform offers this, so it’s worth confirming directly rather than assuming.
Red flags to avoid
- Vague compliance claims without specifics on how or how often that’s verified.
- No visible update history or changelog for policy content.
- No clear answer to who wrote the legal content or how it’s kept current.
- No acknowledgement or version tracking built in.
Employee Handbook Software Benefits
When you use employee handbook software, you reap two major benefits. First, you don’t have to do the heavy lifting of creating a handbook from a blank page. When you use software, you’re more likely to cover all the important topics and policies. This can save considerable time, especially for small businesses.
Second, when you use a handbook generator with legal expertise, you’ll get a universal or state-specific, legally compliant document. That protects your company from liability, and eliminates the need to have your in-house team or lawyer create the document, which can be quite expensive. Instead, you can simply have your legal team review before you distribute.
Who Benefits Most from Employee Handbook Software?
Small businesses
Get baseline required policies in place without hiring outside counsel for a first handbook, and a system that flags new requirements automatically as the business grows.
Growing companies
Crossing employee-count thresholds activates new legal requirements automatically—sexual harassment training, FMLA, ACA reporting, and similar—and software built around those thresholds catches the transition without someone having to notice it manually.
Multi-state employers
Benefit most directly from automated state and local addenda, since the alternative is manually tracking every jurisdiction’s requirements by hand as the company adds locations or remote hires.
Remote & hybrid teams
Since applicable law follows an employee’s physical location rather than company headquarters, software that updates automatically as remote hires are added in new states closes a gap that’s easy to miss manually.
HR consultants and PEOs
Manage handbooks for multiple client companies across different states at once, and need a system that scales that complexity rather than rebuilding compliance logic separately for every client.
When Should You Replace Your Current Employee Handbook Process?
Using word documents
Manually edited Word documents have no built-in way to track which version is current, who has acknowledged which version, or whether a specific policy still reflects current law—all of which have to be managed separately and manually.
Using free templates
Free templates are written to apply broadly across jurisdictions, so they tend to miss state-specific thresholds and local ordinances, and they don’t update themselves as the underlying law changes after you’ve downloaded them.
Relying on outside counsel for every update
Effective for complex, one-off situations, but expensive and slow as a way to handle routine, recurring updates—a minor wording change to reflect a new state law shouldn’t require a full legal engagement each time.
Managing multiple state handbooks manually
Tracking law changes across several states by hand is manageable at a small scale and becomes the limiting factor as the number of states grows—the volume of updates eventually outpaces what a manual process can reliably catch.
How to Choose Employee Handbook Software
Questions to ask before buying
- Who writes and maintains the policy language—attorneys, or a generic template library?
- How quickly are legal updates applied after a law changes
- Are applied updates automatic or something you have to trigger yourself?
- Does it generate state and local addenda, or one blended policy set?
- How are employee acknowledgements collected, stored, and retrieved if needed later?
Features that matter most
Multi-state logic, automatic legal updates, and acknowledgement tracking matter more than interface polish or add-on features. A platform that’s easy to use but doesn’t reliably keep pace with legal changes creates a false sense of security.
Common mistakes when choosing software
A frequent mistake is choosing a broad, all-in-one HR suite where the handbook is a bundled afterthought rather than the core product—generic HR tools often generate a single national policy set with limited state-specific logic. Another is not checking who’s actually responsible for the legal accuracy of the content, since “software-generated” isn’t the same as “attorney-reviewed.”
Employee Handbook Software Checklist
Use this as a quick evaluation list when comparing options:
- State-specific compliance: Generates the correct policy set for every state and locality where you have employees.
- Automatic legal updates: Applies or flags new legal requirements without waiting for someone to notice a law changed.
- Customizable policies: Allows company-specific policies to be added alongside required legal content.
- Electronic distribution: Delivers handbook updates to employees without a manual print-and-sign process.
- Employee signature tracking: Records who acknowledged which version of the handbook, and when.
- Ongoing compliance monitoring: Continues tracking legal changes after purchase, rather than being accurate only at the point of setup.
Use SixFifty’s Employee Handbook Software for Legally Compliant Handbooks
When you need efficient, legally-sound employee handbook software, look no further than SixFifty. Our employee handbook tool pairs easy-to-use technology with real legal expertise to automatically generate legally compliant employee handbooks in record time. Simply follow the instructions and answer questions about your company. The software will automatically generate your complete handbook. Best of all, you’ll be notified anytime state or federal law changes, so you can regenerate your handbooks as needed.
If you’re ready to save time and money on your employee handbooks, schedule a product demo with SixFifty today!
Looking for the employee handbook requirements for your state? View our interactive map for required employee handbook policies by state.
