Policies & Procedures Distribution

jburmeister

Hey, all...

Quick question. In what type of format do you keep your policies and procedures in? Do you think all policies and procedures should be in the Employee Handbook? I don't believe they should be...

Procedures, such as "Requesting a New Hire, Requesting a Check Request", etc. should not be in the handbook (because there is just too much), but they should be somewhere that all employees have access to. I also realize that training is important with new policies and procedures - I'm just wondering where all these should "go" after training? Do you just keep sending new policies as they are created to your employees, or do you create binders/packets every so often?

My ideal situation would be to put them all on the employee intranet site; however, we do not have one yet. What would I do in the meantime?

What I've been doing so far is presenting new policies at weekly management meetings (giving copies to managers and explaining the "jist" of the policy), then distributing the new policies, as they come, to all employees via e-mail. We are a very new company and new policies are being created every week. Do you think this process is adequate?

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

New HR Kid on the Block

deniseE

We have maintained our "policies" in a binder and provided one for each department. Since email and intranet, we've begun to distribute new policies directly to the workforce by email and posting them on the intranet site.

One of the benefits to the electronic access is that if a policy is ever called into question (UC hearing, for example)...you have a methodology for providing the average worker with access to your policies. He/She cannot then argue "but I didn't know!"

Don D

I agree with what Denise did. In my last job, our small HR Department spent over six months developing a comprehensive P&P manual. As I've mentioned on here before, we then duplicated a manual for each Owner, Officer, VP, Department Head and major supervisor. These were in large binders. These were distributed by HR as Controlled Copies and each receiver signed for it. The first page of the book set out the groundrules; that each recipient would be responsible for it's shelving, have it available to each direct report, know it's whereabouts at all times. Each time HR had an update, out department went around and physically removed obsolete pages and inserted new ones. This may sound a bit archaic and anal; however, it's about the only way I've ever found to make sure the material is accessible and up to date, other than having it all on some computerized system. We didn't have that capability, nor did all the employees have access to computer stations.

The employee handbook contained very few actual policies other than those mandated by law, such as FMLA. It was a basic compilation of rules and procedures and admonitions.

bamahr

Until we got a Intranet I put policies and procedures in a binder. Now we have a Section on the Intranet specifically for HR. The employees can download forms, insurance info, etc.. Made things much easier for a Department of ONE.