Updating Your Employee Handbook to Comply With New Laws in 2019 - Webinar (Recorded)

The purposes and the scope of employee handbook policies and the practices are changing and expanding. From a siloed HR activity that creates insular documents concerned primarily with communicating the organizational work rules and benefits, employee handbook policies and practices have evolved into a critical component of an organization-wide management process that maximizes organizations' achievement of business objectives, enhances the value of their human capital, and minimizes legal risk. To increase the effectiveness of their employment policies, organizations will have to:Enhance their business, operational, and legal intelligence to ensure they have identified the changing external and internal factors that affect their policiesIncrease internal stakeholder participation in the handbook development process to obtain greater employee commitment and operational alignmentEstablish new metrics to assess handbook policy and practices performance and measure the achievement of organization goalsImplement internal controls that identify and alert management when employee handbook process failures occur. Thus employee handbooks will increasingly have to ensure that they are aligned with strategic and business objectives, are properly drafted, and are effectively implemented. Additionally they will have to:Enhance the employment brandPlay a key role in recruitment and retentionEnhance employee relations, employee morale, and productivityContribute to uniform and consistent application, interpretation, and enforcement of organizational policies and rulesProtect the organization against claims of improper employee/supervisor conductReduce the organization's exposure to employment related liabilitiesFrom this perspective, employee handbooks will continue to play an important role in communicating with and providing information for employees.