Guidelines for your company "Employee Handbook"!
Inform the employee about the organization’s policies, procedures, and benefits as soon as possible. For most organizations, the employee handbook is the source of much of the information needed to be informed about benefits, hours of work, pay policies, and work rules.
Most employers also require new employees to sign a receipt acknowledging they received and read the handbook and that they understand they are “at-will” employees, if in fact that is the case.
Some policies, such as sexual harassment, equal employment opportunity, drug and alcohol use and testing, and safety, are so important that you may want to conduct special training for them. (A few states, such as California and Connecticut, require sexual harassment training, so check state law.)
In particular, new employees should understand how to make complaints under these policies. You also should review information in the handbook regarding benefits and provide appropriate summary plan descriptions.
In addition, if the employee will be participating in your health insurance plan and COBRA covers you, you must provide an initial COBRA notice to the employee and any covered spouse and dependents.
If you have a policy requiring new employees to take a physical exam or undergo any medical tests, these typically should be conducted prior to the employee’s first day.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), you may conduct any type of medical exam at the post-offer stage if all entering employees in the same job category must undergo the examination. However, once the employee has actually started work, the ADA requires that any medical exam be job-related and consistent with business necessity.
Complete necessary paperwork. The first day often is also the most convenient time to have a new employee fill out required forms. Some forms, such as the employment eligibility verification (Form I-9) and withholding allowance (Form W-4), are required by law.
The Form I-9 should be completed within three business days of the employee’s first day. The Form W-4, designating the employee’s number of withholding exemptions for tax purposes, should be completed on or before the first day of employment. If the new hire is under 18, you also may need a certificate of age and a work permit issued by your state to verify the employee may work in the particular job.
Other forms may be needed to administer your policies, such as those for benefits enrollment and beneficiary designations, direct pay deposit authorization, and employee emergency contact information.
You also must complete state-required new hire reports for all new employees. Under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which establishes a “parent locator service” to help enforce child support obligations and child custody and visitation orders, you must provide information on your new employees to your state “new hire directory.”
Most states provide new hire reporting forms, and many employers give the forms to their new employees to fill out and then submit them to the state. (You can find helpful information on each state’s reporting requirements from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Administration for Children and Families on the Internet at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/newhire/employer/contacts/nh_matrix.htm
Nurture Your Newbies There is no question about it - finding, training, and replacing employees is expensive. HR experts estimate that turnover costs from 30% to 50% of an employee’s first year salary.
Some suggest that this cost is closer to 100%. Clearly, most actions you take to retain new employees are worth the effort, and an effective welcome and new hire integration process can help ensure a better retention rate.
These actions do not have to be elaborate or difficult to be effective. None of the eight tips suggested above are expensive, although they do require careful advance planning for successful coordination and implementation. Your goal should be to provide a professional setting and make the new hire feel as comfortable as possible.
The six suggestions on the “To Do” list that follows are based on common sense and are relatively easy to implement, plus when executed properly, they can have a strong impact on your effectiveness.
On the one hand, they are designed to limit corporate liability and, on the other, to build morale and improve overall employee relations.
Either way, you are taking action to set a positive tone while improving professional standards.
1. Make sure employees get feedback on a regular basis. Once-a-year evaluations are not enough. Employees should receive regular input from their supervisors. These discussions should typically focus on day-to-day performance objectives rather than on past mistakes or failures. This approach requires supervisors to observe and evaluate their employees regularly and to work closely with targeted individuals, as needed. In addition, make sure your managers give positive feedback for a job well done.
2. Terminate poorly performing or disruptive employees. This advice is an obvious companion to the first suggestion. However, many managers are unwilling to terminate an employee even when the action is justified. The most common reason is the fear of being sued, but others include organizational inertia, fear of confrontation, and concern for the employee’s economic well being.
However, if you allow a poorly performing or disruptive employee to continue working, productivity and efficiency will suffer and discontent will spread. You can help limit the possibility of legal claims and make yourself more comfortable with the decision by following your normal disciplinary process before you terminate. For most employers this includes:
- Giving notice to the employee of the specific performance problems and the consequences of not improving;
- Establishing goals for improvement;
- Setting a reasonable timeframe for meeting the goals (normally two weeks to 30 days);
- Following up to see if there is improvement; and
- Terminating the employee if the goals have not been met.
3. Pay overtime, even when you do not think it was properly authorized. One of the surest ways to provoke a wage and hour claim is *not* to pay employees properly for overtime they have worked. According to Department of Labor (DOL) regulations, if you are aware that an employee is working more time than is scheduled, you must compensate the employee, even if you did not specifically request the additional work. For example, if your policy requiring prior authorization for overtime work was not followed but a manager was aware the employee performed the work, you should pay for the overtime. You may, however, discipline the employee (and manager) under your normal disciplinary procedures for violating your work rule prohibiting unauthorized overtime.
4. Treat your exempt employees properly as exempt. Most employers expect their exempt employees (those exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)) to work as long as it takes “to get the job done.” Yet, some of these same employers also penalize their exempts by requiring them to use hours of paid vacation or sick time when they leave early to take care of personal business. This practice can backfire in two ways.
First, it may jeopardize the employees’ actual exempt status. The FLSA prohibits employers from docking the pay of exempt employees for absences of less than a day. The DOL does permit vacation or sick leave offsets since the employee does not experience a reduction in compensation. However, a few courts have disagreed.
The dissenting courts have determined that this practice, in fact, treats the exempt employee like an hourly, nonexempt employee and, therefore, triggers loss of the exempt status. As a result, you may be put in the position of having to pay overtime to the employee, and others similarly situated, if they lose their exemption because of your pay practice. (Note that there are special rules for exempt public employees allowing them to be considered exempt even if their pay is reduced for partial-day absences.)
Second, and perhaps just as importantly, the offset policy creates poor employee relations. Exempt employees will resent being required to use paid leave for partial-day absences, particularly if they regularly work more than 40 hours per week. If your concern is that your exempt employees may abuse their status by leaving early or coming in late, address those issues as a separate matter. For example, discipline exempt employees who do not complete their work or are not available when needed. In other words, do not penalize all your exempt employees just because of the possible abuses of a few.
5. Make sure you designate leave appropriately under the FMLA. The single biggest compliance mistake most employers make under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is their failure to notify an employee that a leave is specifically covered by the FMLA. When this failure occurs, you cannot count the time off against the employee’s 12-week FMLA allotment until proper notification is given. As a result, the employee still enjoys the protections of the law, including continuation of health care coverage and reinstatement, but does not draw down the 12 weeks of protected FMLA leave until notice is given.
To prevent this problem, every time an employee requests a leave (such as for workers’ compensation, short-term disability, or pregnancy), you should immediately determine whether the employee’s need for leave is covered by the FMLA and then whether the employee is eligible for FMLA leave. If the leave qualifies, you should give the employee written notice that it will be counted against the FMLA’s 12-week entitlement.
6. Review your HR policies and procedures. Clearly written policies that are regularly reviewed can be both an effective employee relations tool and a good defense against employee lawsuits. In contrast, policies that are out-of-date or improperly applied can have exactly the opposite effect.
So, make sure that your policies reflect any new laws, regulations, and court cases that can affect both policy language and how you implement the policies. Most experts suggest both a thorough review at least once a year and the use of a notification service or publication to keep you posted during the interim. Of course, if you revise any of your policies, you should distribute and thoroughly explain the changes to all employees.
Ensure Success - Don’t Get Overwhelmed * Many successful executives will tell you that the best route to achievement is commitment followed by action.
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