Document company policies

An Employee Handbook, at the minimum, should include government supported policies such as discrimination, harassment, at-will and safety policies. Most employers also include vacation, sick and personal time off, benefit and pay information. Larger companies (with over 50 employees) also usually explain how to apply for Family and Medical Leave (FMLA). Our Employee Handbook document building tool can help you write a customized handbook easily. You can save your original version online and change it as needed.

Beyond the basics, many companies also include in their handbook:

• Dress code and hygiene expectations
• A description of the company culture
• Social media policies
• Parking maps
• Emergency procedures
• A description of the Nondisclosure Agreement
• Termination policies

There are two types of Social Media Policies, those that govern your company's social media accounts and those that guide your employee's posts to their own accounts. You can 100-percent control what is posted to your company pages, but you have limited control of your employee's posts to their own profiles.

Your marketing team or the person that posts to your company's social media pages should be closely guided in order to carefully reflect how you want your company viewed by your customers and the public. Unless you fully trust your social media person, you should review every post before it is posted online. You should also carefully craft social media and branding guidelines.

Your employee can post any type of personal information to their own accounts: however, you can guide what they reveal about your company. Before writing your Social Media Policy, you should review any laws that may prohibit you from violating your employees right to free speech. For the most part, your governing policy should only include things that might violate Confidentiality Agreements. You should also tell them how you plan to monitor their activities. In your employee social media guidelines, you can include the restriction of:

• Sharing proprietary information, including images or client information
• Posting as the company in their personal profile
• Posting anything that might leak insider-trading type information
• Sharing information about future acquisitions or mergers

You can change company policies at any time based on new government requirements or for your own reasons. To change a company policy, you do not have to reissue new Employee Handbooks to your employees, but you should notify them of the change.

To change a company policy:

1. Write the policy change and make sure to include whom it may affect and when.
2. Budget resources to support the change.
3. Have your new policy reviewed by your employment lawyer or HR consultant.
4. Develop training materials if needed.
5. Announce the policy change in-person, via email, or other.
6. Add the change to future Employee Handbooks.