Employee Manual Guide | ConnectsUs HR

Welcome to the Employee Manual Kit! Where you can create employee manuals for Ontario, Alberta, and BC. Don't operate in Canada?

Creating an employee manual may seem like a daunting undertaking, especially if your company has never had an Employee Manual (and maybe doesn't even want one), but chances are you've experienced the pain of Staff not having the information they need, knowing what's expected of them, or pushing the limit on generosity, patience or tolerance.

Get clear on your expectations, and use the Employee Manual Kit to kickstart your project. Right out of the box, 80% of the work is done.

This is no small undertaking — we won't lie about that — but thousands of companies have used the HR Toolkit templates to create an Employee Manual for their businesses. So, we have a lot of experience and share it in this kit.

Let's start with the basics.

What's an Employee Manual?

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Short answer

It's a book of clarity.

Long answer

An Employee Manual is a document that's made accessible to employees by an employer that serves as a rule book and reference guide for the workplace. It's essentially an operating manual to navigate the complex network of human and operational details that make up a place of work.

Clear expectations are important and you do need to protect employees and your company, but we think you can get a lot more value from an Employee Manual than a list of antagonistic rules. The real value and highest return on investment (ROI) you get with a comprehensive HR Manual is providing information that brings people together, gets them aligned, helps them understand company values and culture, and gets them working towards a common goal. It means communicating information about your business and competitors, your brand and customer service philosophies, and profiling the person who will do well in your culture.

ROI is also realized when employees have operational information at their fingertips, preventing repeat questions such as:

How do I submit my expenses?
How do I record my absences?
How do I book a meeting room?
Where do I find an org chart?
How do I turn the lights off when I leave at night?

Why you might avoid having one

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Yes, there can be disadvantages to launching an Employee Manual:

If the Manual is poorly written, it may lock your company into an unintended expressed or implied contract
It could expose your company to discrimination claims if policies are not uniformly or consistently applied
It takes significant time and effort to create
You can't just create it, attach it to an email, and expect the project to be over. Introducing it into your company requires careful planning, face-to-face time with Staff, training, and reinforcement from all levels of management
You can't just launch a Manual and let it rot for 20 years. It's a living document that needs to be updated regularly so it remains relevant. Maintaining it needs to be part of someone's job description

Why you need one

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Top 10

Some of the reasons you need an employee manual may not be obvious. It's not always about legalese or conduct. Here are our top 10:

Clearly communicate what's expected of Staff and eliminate ambiguity. If an employee signs off on conduct policies, they're more likely to adhere to them.
Protect your company against the NOTMIC.
Provide operational information to staff, even when their managers are absent
Provide guidelines for managers when hiring and dealing with human resources issues. Your employee manual plays 'bad cop' for soft or inexperienced managers, and 'good cop' for more heavy-handed ones
Communicate information about your company's business and culture so staff understand the big picture and the 'how' things are done in your company
Get an instant, documented orientation program for new hires that significantly accelerates the learning curve
Demonstrate to job candidates, new hires, and potential investors that your company is pro-active, organized, and well-run. Top talent want to work for well-run companies
Help management make decisions that are consistent, uniform and predictable, supporting consistent treatment of staff, fairness and transparency
Decrease liability by ensuring up-to-date and timely compliance information is available to all staff
Satisfy criteria for government contracts or criteria required for obtaining certain types of business insurance, for example, Directors and Officers Liability Insurance