Reviewing HR Documents: Contracts of Employment and Company Employee Handbook

 

I’ve heard many stories of business owners who have engaged a company to review their contract of employment and/or company employee handbook to hear them saying, after they’ve started the project, ‘I think we should scrap this and start again from scratch’. Thus leading to extra expenditure which you hadn’t planned on.

I won’t do that. I will look at what you have in place before providing my quote and if I think it is so out of date that it needs a complete re-write I will tell you up front.

Contracts of Employment

I will meet with you to review the content of your existing contract of employment and discuss what other clauses may be of benefit to your business.

If you are growing business who hasn’t had an employee handbook it’s possible that your contract is lengthy with clauses been added over the years as situations have arisen. Now could be an appropriate time to seperate some of those clauses out and create a company employee handbook. From there I can make the changes we’ve discussed or you can do the work and email the finished document(s) to me for a final check.

Individual Policies

Keeping an Employee Handbook up to date can be a bit like painting the Forth Road Bridge – you’ve just finished it, get it authorised by the Directors and issued a copy to all staff and then another piece of legislation changes!!! How anoying! But you don’t need to give your Employee Handbook a complete review, you could just give that one policy some attention. For instance the introduction of the Fit Note in April 2010 could have made your absence policy out of date.

If the review is a simple ‘bring it up to date legislative wise’ it will be a simply process of you emailing it to me and then I’ll return it updated and with any suggestions I see for improving the process.

If your policy is no longer fit for purpose and needs a complete re-write I will meet with you to discuss the process you want to communicate to your employees. From there I will write your new policy for you.

Company Employee Handbook

In preparation of the review of your company employee handbook I will meet with you to discuss the content of your handbook. During the meeting we will consider the following points:-

  • are there any irrelevant sections that could be removed?
  • are there any common and important policies and working practices missing?
  • are any policies included that you would be unable or unwilling to enforce?
  • are there any conflicting policies and working practices?
  • does the language and tone reflect your current working practices?

From there I will update your company employee handbook or you can do the work and email the finished document(s) to me for a final check.

If money is tight you can review your company employee handbook yourself. My article: Top Tips for Reviewing Your Company Employee Handbook is aimed at helping you get it right.

Case Study

  • Meeting to clarify the scope of the project (1 hour on site or via telephone)
  • Review and improve contract of employment
  • Review and improve employee handbook
  • Delivery of results

Price: £1,000