Page 215 - An Indispensible Resource for Being a Credible Activist

aren’t involved in revising it, do read it carefully, research what you’re uncertain of, and pro-
vide feedback on the handbook to your leadership.
Don’t bother trying to memorize it; like employment laws, it will always change. Your
policies will change, state and federal laws will change, and the workplace will change. It’s
always best to look something up, read it, and be certain you’re giving an employee correct
information. If anything is unclear, get clarification from legal or elsewhere before commu-
nicating with employees. Follow all procedures properly, and document that you’ve followed
them properly. E-mails confirming conversations are excellent ways to accomplish this; then
everyone remains clear.
Collect all employee handbook receipt confirmations or give new employees deadlines
by which they must return these to you. Putting a reminder on the shared networked calen-
dar can help. Or you can assign this collection task to your assistant or intern to ensure there
is a system in place to always collect and file these. Be sure the employee has had a chance
to read the entire handbook and ask any questions.
If there are ever revisions to your employee handbook, these should be collaborative
efforts among HR, legal, leadership, and finance. Be sure that the form employees sign has
a place for their printed name as well, as many signatures are completely illegible. Be sure
there is also a line for the date. This form should be immediately filed in the employee’s file,
as it may be needed if there is ever a violation of policy in the future or if an employee
claims he or she was not aware of a policy.
It is unrealistic to expect employees to remember every detail of every policy, however,
which is why they are given a handbook. The company intranet should also contain the lat-
est version of your employee handbook as well as user-friendly ways for employees to
search the handbook for terms or policies about which they may have questions.
You can get all the information on SHRM and other HR Web sites regarding what poli-
cies need to be in your handbook. Keep in mind that while getting the information is easy,
employment laws are almost always changing and revising the employee handbook is very
time-consuming. The greater challenge is to determine collaboratively with your leadership
what kind of company culture you intend to build and how you’ll accomplish that via poli-
cies, training, reinforcement, and leadership modeling and full support. Hopefully, this book
will help both you and your leadership make insightful decisions about company culture
and how you plan to influence, shape, and mandate it. Corporations do have the power to
mandate their cultures. The question is, will they do it and will they walk the walk?

198 The H R Toolkit