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Employee Handbooks Make Sense For Small Employers
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Article 3: Handbooks Guide Employer Decisions
Employees feel confused and angry when they’re treated unfairly. Under such conditions individuals perform poorly, and that erodes your bottom line.
An employee handbook provides guidelines that help you treat everyone with an even hand. To see how, consider how you would respond to these common employee questions:
- Can I have some leave to attend my child’s school performance?
- How will jury duty affect my pay?
- When do I get my performance review?
- How much paid time off can I get?
Absent an employee handbook that provides clear-cut answers to such questions, you’ll end up giving off-the-cuff responses which inadvertently favor one employee over another.
A resentful employee is bad enough. Far worse is the legal liability that can result from disparate treatment.
“Inconsistent treatment of employees can lead to costly lawsuits,” cautions Katherine E. Bierma Pregel, an associate with the Washington, D.C., office of Littler Mendelson, the nation’s largest labor and employment law firm.
Pregel gives this example: Suppose Maureen asks for some extra paid leave. You grant the request because your business affairs are up to date. Then a few months later Sam asks for similar leave. This time you need all hands on deck for an upcoming trade show, so you deny Sam’s request.
Now Sam starts to wonder: “Why did I get treated differently?”
At the very least Sam’s performance will slip because he feels you don’t value him as much as Maureen. At the worst, Sam may feel he has been treated differently because he is in a protected class. Perhaps he is disabled, or a minority, or much older than Maureen. That may spark a costly discrimination lawsuit.
An employee handbook that outlines the rules for paid leave can head off such disparities before they occur.
“The employer with a handbook can say ‘here are our policies, and we have to stick with them,’” says Pregel.
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