Signing off on Policies on your website linked from your Employment Contract

The following provides an example process to get sign employee sign off on your conduct policies or employee manual before they begin work.  

Why is policies sign off required prior to an employee's first day of work?

It is important that the document that holds your conduct policies is presented to the employee together with their Engagement Agreement (Employment Contract Agreement or Independent Contractor Agreement) and signed before starting their engagement to ensure that the conduct policies are legally enforceable.  Putting a set of never-before-seen policies in front of a new hire after they begin work and asking them to sign off on them essentially changes their existing employment contract - whether implied or executed in writing.  In order for the terms and conditions outlined in your conduct policies to hold up, you have to ensure they're signed before the employee's first day of work.

Sending the Employment Offer by Email

We suggest to our clients to consistently proceed as follows with all new employees (or independent contractors) to get sign off on conduct policies that protect your
company and does not require an employee to provide an original signature on a printed employee manual.
1.  Click on the PDF that opens the agreement sent by email.
2. Refer to Section 4 within the agreement for how the sign off policy documents are linked from the agreement to documents saved on your website. 

Find out how to create a web page on your website so that employees can access your current and previous versions of your employee manual. 

Subject:  Employment Agreement

Dear Salena, 

I am very pleased to present you with an offer of employment to join the ABC Technology team in the role of General Manager.  

Please find attached your employment agreement that references the Staff Policies section of our Employee Manual and also references the Terms & Definitions Addendum that together represent the terms and conditions related to your employment. 

If you accept this offer and its terms and conditions, kindly print, sign, witness and scan all pages of the Employment Agreement and return to me by email by end of day January 17, 2019, at which time the offer outlined in this email expires.  

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the details of this offer.  Please do not hesitate to contact me by email. 

Salena, we are very much looking forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

ABC Technology Industries Ltd. 

James Caan​
COO

IMPORTANT NOTICE:  This email is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, you are asked to permanently delete all copies of this email and notify the sender immediately.  Thank you.