Every once in a while we are lucky enough to get to work on the holy grail of a client’s operations – the policies and procedures manual. Sometimes it’s after our business compliance audit turns up some unexpected sources of liability, sometimes it’s after some triggering event has highlighted the need to put things on paper, and sometimes it’s a proactive first step in putting together a company right from the ground up.
The P&P manual is a great place to tie employees into the workplace by giving them a comprehensive document that outlines all of the rights and responsibilities associated with their job. It includes government mandated policies that address privacy, harassment, violence, accessibility standards and many more. It also sets out the specifics of the discipline policy so there are no ambiguities (and far fewer lawsuits) in the event of discipline or termination.
I probably get a lot more excited about putting these together than Inga or Paul or Murray do – but they often have a lot of input into them. Either they have knowledge of the client’s operations that help customize a policy that works in their workplace, or they have court experience on a particular issue that goes directly into how the policies and procedures are written.
If you are putting together a business from the ground up or are ready for a spring cleaning to make sure that your workplace is compliant from the top to the bottom, please have competent legal counsel draft some policies that work for your business, or review your current policies to ensure that they reflect the hundreds of legislative changes that have occurred in the last decade.
Scott R. Young