Is your Employee Handbook Up to Date?
Is your employee handbook actually up to date? There is no law that requires your company to have an employee handbook. There are, however, federal and state laws that you need to follow, and the best way to demonstrate that you’re following them is with policies in an employee handbook. In addition, your employees should be able to easily access those guidelines. Your handbook details your workplace’s rules and policies as well as laws and policies every employee should follow. If you aren’t updating your handbook regularly, your policies and guidelines may be out of date with federal regulations.
What is an Employee Handbook?
An employee handbook is a document created by your business’s Human Resource Team or General Counsel to communicate employment laws or guidelines and company-related policies that employees must know and follow.
What policies are legally required?
The Department of Labor requires companies to inform their employees of their rights, and each state has separate state and federal regulations.
What policies should be included?
All state and federal laws required should be included in your company’s handbook. Please check SixFifty’s state map for state-by-state policies required by local and federal labor laws.
How often should you update your employee handbook?
Ideally, you should consider updating your handbook any time that a policy required by state or federal law changes. When Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, for example, many companies’ FMLA and Sick Pay policies were impacted. If updating your handbook frequently isn’t possible, companies should update their handbook annually at the very least, as employment law is ever-changing and it is important to keep up to date with employment regulations. Reflecting these changes in your company’s employee handbook protects both your business and your employees.
How to update your employee handbook
If you are creating your first employee handbook or updating an existing one, Sixfifty is here to help! Federal and state laws are ever-changing. The Department of Labor alone oversees and enforces around 180 federal employment laws. These mandates cover workplace activities for 150 million workers and 10 million workplaces. These mandates cover employment laws for hiring, wages, hours and salary, discrimination, harassment, employee benefits, paid time off, job applicants as well as employee testing, privacy, and other important workplace and employee rights matters. In addition to Federal Law, you’ll also need to consider state and local laws in every state and city where you have employees. Providing your employees with an up-to-date employee handbook early on in their employment is a great way to make sure that your employees understand their rights and what’s expected of them. An up-to-date employee handbook is also a great resource for employees to refer to when they have questions about company policies or their employee rights.
Sixfifty Employment 2.0
If you need help creating an employee handbook or creating a safe working environment post COVID, SixFifty’s Employment 2.0 platform can help you create all the documents your company needs. And at SixFifty, we worked with the top employment law firm in the nation to automate the employment paperwork you need to manage a workforce that is more remote, mobile, and diverse.
- Employment Handbook and Policies: SixFifty automated writing employment policies just like a lawyer would. Resulting in over 50 policies that account for the law in every state, customized to your business.
- Return-to-Work: We automated back-to-work documents and hybrid workplace policies just as a lawyer would. The result, the best set of employment docs for the new world, post COVID.
- DEI: Sixfifty taught a computer to help you plan and implement a diversity, equity, and inclusion program at your company. The result is the best automated DEI guidance on the market.
Need Help?
SixFifty is the easiest, most affordable, and best solution for your Employment Law needs. Whether you need an employee handbook, COVID-19 workplace policies, or to improve with your diversity, equity, and inclusion, we can help. Schedule a demo today!
Looking for the employee handbook requirements for your state? View our interactive map for required employee handbook policies by state.
