Partner Sue Dowling, in our Employment Law team, explains why employers need to review and update their employee handbooks.
There is never a bad time for employers to ask themselves a few questions when it comes to their employee handboooks, practices and policies, including:
- Do your employment policies allow you to manage HR situations effectively?
- Are your policies fit for purpose?
- Do they reflect your organisation, its values and the sector in which it operates?
- Are you confident that they support the necessary organisational changes planned this year?
Employment policies help you to run, protect and develop your business effectively and efficiently and to get the best from your workforce. However they are also ‘live’ procedures which should not only be tailored to your organisation and its current needs but should be reviewed regularly to ensure that they are fit for purpose, as well as legally compliant.
Employment Law and good HR practice constantly develop and to get the best from your employment policies, they need to evolve too. When it’s busy it’s easy to forget that employment policies underpin the organisation. It is almost certain that an organisation’s employment policies relating to its workforce will be out of date, unless they have been reviewed within the last 12 months and the worst time to find this out is when you need to rely on them.
Our Employment Law team can assist organisations in reviewing their existing employee handbook, and/or updating your policies or the creation of both. The team is happy to discuss the options (without obligation) to identify a cost-effective and appropriate way forward.
For further information or legal advice, please contact law@blandy.co.uk or call 0118 951 6800.
This article is intended for the use of clients and other interested parties. The information contained in it is believed to be correct at the date of publication, but it is necessarily of a brief and general nature and should not be relied upon as a substitute for specific professional advice.
