Chris Cooley (00:03.106)
I want to thank you for joining us today. I believe we have a great topic. We’re going to talk about handbooks today, which is something that every business needs. And we have Emily Frederick joining us today with my HR concierge. She’s our senior HR consultant and handbook guru. So I appreciate you joining us.

Emily (00:21.178)
And yeah, it’s always a pleasure.

Chris Cooley (00:22.946)
Yeah, absolutely. you know, as we’re recording this, it’s end of October, almost November. And so we’re kind of getting upon the end of the year, which is a great time to look at your handbook, review your handbook, and kind of get it right for the new year, new regulations, those kind of things. So kind of if we step back a little bit, Emily, what is a handbook and what is its role?

Emily (00:50.51)
You know, a handbook is a lot of different things. It’s mainly the document that a company needs to use to outline its policies, procedures, employee rights as they relate to non-discrimination, non-harassment, things like that. It should also be a company culture document. So it should be customized specific to a company. It should have their mission, their values, things like that in it.

The main thing is that it’s really there for an employee’s rights and you need to be sure that managers understand what’s in there and what is not in there, things like that.

Chris Cooley (01:31.338)
Yeah, and I think that’s important. You you mentioned like culture and so, so many times we talk to people and they say, well, it’s just a book of rules. But it’s really so much more than that.

Emily (01:41.978)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, the company really has that opportunity to explain who they are to their employees, you know, and let them know these are the kinds of things that as a company will be working towards together. And then these are the kinds of things that are not acceptable here. So it’s a good communication document.

Chris Cooley (02:05.494)
Yeah, and it’s interesting because we do work with so many people. We do a ton of these handbooks and a lot of them as we as we’re reviewing them are so different. You know, we get the ones that have the funny pictures and the colors and the fonts and all those kind of things. And then we have those that are they’re just it’s just black and white. And again, it just fits their culture. It’s kind of the way they operate and they’re all kind of living documents and different and those things.

Emily (02:33.677)
Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Cooley (02:35.03)
So it’s really interesting to kind of see those dynamics between businesses. we create the handbook. Why is it so important that we get the handbook update?

Emily (02:49.434)
So the handbook has to be up to date with current federal and state laws because at the end of the day, it’s going to be a legal reference point for both the employees and the employers in case there’s any sort of dispute. It’s able to provide evidence of the company’s established policies and show that those policies are applied uniformly across all employees.

It’s really important for things like unemployment claims. So if an employee files an unemployment claim, the company is able to say, well, this is the reason they were terminated. They violated this policy. And here’s evidence that we apply that policy uniformly. And here’s an acknowledgement that shows that the employee knew about this policy. And so that’s one of the really important things.

Chris Cooley (03:39.308)
Yeah, I know a lot of times like in prior life, right? We had different issues that would pop up. Either there was a harassment suit or whatever it may be. And I know always one of the first things that’s asked for is that handbook. Show me, show me where your policy is, show me how do you address it, have you addressed it? You know, those kinds of things.

Emily (03:55.94)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Cooley (04:05.41)
And so, you know, as we think about that, what should we include? So what are those kind of primary? I guess there’s kind of, you have two things. You have what I would term more of the regulatory. These are just those things that we need to include. And then we also have those things that are more company specific, right? And so what are those things that we need to make sure from a regulatory perspective that we have?

Emily (04:29.114)
year.

Emily (04:35.234)
You know what? There are those things. First, I’m going to say what should not be in the handbook. So what it’s very important and that your handbook, while it’s going to be used as a legal reference point, if an employer ever needs it, it is not a legally binding document. And that’s really important to note because you if it were to be a legally binding document, then it might disrupt the at will status of an employee. So you don’t want to put things in there like

Chris Cooley (04:41.782)
Okay.

Emily (05:04.106)
NDAs or employment contracts, something like that that the employee could accidentally be signing when they’re signing the handbook acknowledgement. So in fact, it’s really important to have something in there that says this does not change the out-will status of our employee. Like nothing in this handbook changes that. That’s the first thing I want to say. Then, yeah, absolutely. We have federal law compliance things that need to be addressed.

Fair Labor Standards Act, so FLSA things like minimum wage and overtime, how overtime is calculated, what hours in a day or in a week because those laws vary by state, what hours count towards overtime. It’s important to have leave policies.

The company’s specific leave policies and then FMLA that needs to be addressed in a handbook. Anti-discrimination policies, your equal employment opportunity and then any non-harassment policies. And then some companies will also need to include safety policies, OSHA standards, things like that.

Chris Cooley (06:21.098)
Okay. And so with that, one thing we think about too is we talk a lot about state requirements, but also which are states becoming so much more progressive now as it becomes regulations, right? But also we’ve seen municipality. We see a lot of that as well.

Emily (06:41.454)
Yeah, absolutely. In some of the especially more progressive states, we’ll drill down to the county, the city. So yeah, different municipalities have their own special regulations and laws, special employee leaves, special minimum wage standards, things like that.

Chris Cooley (07:03.84)
Yeah, because you know, it’s interesting. Overtime is not even overtime. It’s not the same everywhere. know, it to, it was the same, it’s calculated the same, but that’s something that employers have to be really cognizant of is even things like that. And really, you know, the handbook to me is it needs to be updated because obviously you need to make sure that it’s relevant and it has the latest regulations.

But also it’s a great way for employers to kind of refresh, to make sure that they do know what those laws are. And to make sure that they’re staying abreast of those from an operating perspective, not just to put in their handbook, but just from a knowledge perspective.

Emily (07:48.922)
For sure. That’s actually something that comes up in a lot of our handbook reviews I’ll I’ll get a handbook in in a state that has more more details that go into its laws for the state or even the jurisdiction and When I provide the update and say well, you know this has to change now You have to in in your jurisdiction. You have to provide overtime payments for hours worked over eight in a day for you know on the seventh

day, there’s more overtime, things like that in their area. And sometimes employers just had no idea that that that regulation had recently changed or that that was something that they should have been doing this entire time because their handbook hadn’t been updated in five years and they just, it’s not something that they keep up with.

Chris Cooley (08:31.19)
Yeah, I remember we had one group that through the process we figured out they had been in violation of wage and hour for like 20 years in the way that they were doing over time. And so it’s just a good way. Now, obviously they fixed that and did whatever they needed to do it. But yeah, it’s really a great way for that. So let me ask you this.

Emily (08:44.378)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Cooley (08:58.518)
What are, we talked about the FLSA and the FMLA. What are other policies that we need to make sure that are included?

Emily (09:09.796)
Just in general.

Chris Cooley (09:12.034)
Yeah, may not be a specific law, if you will, but they’re just good fundamental policies.

Emily (09:20.698)
Absolutely. There are things that your employees need to be made aware of. So, for example, we, the company wants, in most cases, the company is going to want the right to inspect all of the property that’s on the company, or that’s all of the property that’s on the company’s property. And so you’ll need to let your employees know that they have no expectation of privacy where their workspaces are.

Chris Cooley (09:40.609)
Right.

Emily (09:50.028)
are concerned. Or you might need to let employees know that there are, even if it’s not a state requirement, that you have specific meal and break time policies. And that’s the way that they’re going to be communicated to employees just so that there’s not confusion among different managers or supervisors or employees themselves.

Chris Cooley (10:12.128)
Okay, and that makes sense. And so we talk about those and we talked about we don’t need non-competes, we don’t need drug testing policies, those kind of things because specifically from a legal perspective, I know as we work with legal counsel, they’ve told us those need to be signed specifically so that there cannot ever be any ambiguity on whether they read it or not, right? You got a document here that that

Emily (10:38.509)
Absolutely.

Chris Cooley (10:41.824)
that missed. So what are some other things, what are other things that people need to maybe not include? I know when I talk to a lot of employers, they have basically how to run the entire company in their handbook. It’s huge, it’s large, it’s cumbersome. What are, and then typically I’ll try to explain to them, hey, this is generally in another document.

So what are things that you generally don’t include in an employee handbook?

Emily (11:13.688)
No, you’re exactly right. We wouldn’t want to see detailed procedures. So, you know, step by step instructions on something like how to turn in your time for the week. That doesn’t need to be in there. It’s going to it’s going to be skimmed over. First of all, it’s not going to be read. And then when there are enough of those types of policies, then the employee is just not going to read the handbook at all. And it it like you said, it becomes too cumbersome. It becomes too long.

long for an employee to understand it. We wouldn’t want to see anything that’s project related or temporary. In a handbook, even if it’s a temporary policy, temporary policy should be sent out as memos and they shouldn’t be put into place in the handbook for all eternity. We wouldn’t want to see detailed benefit information. A lot of companies change their benefits at open enrollment every single year. And so you wouldn’t

If you did that and benefits changed, you would need to make sure that they were changed in the handbook every single update and that gets cumbersome. And you wouldn’t want employees to have incorrect information. And so rather what you would want to do is say all of your benefit information is updated annually in a guide and you can find this guide in this separate place. And then it’s really important that

There’s nothing discriminatory that’s included in any of the policies. It’s over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of changes nationwide on what can be considered discriminatory. And now what I’m finding a lot is that old dress and appearance policies, old dress codes, they need to be updated because they do have some discriminatory language in them.

So for example, Illinois has the Crown Act, which specifically states that an employer cannot put a ban on hairstyles because different hairstyles are better for different cultures, different nationalities. And for an employer to make a statement that some hairstyles are not considered professional is entirely discriminatory. And so we wouldn’t want to see anything like that.

Chris Cooley (13:36.758)
That makes sense. And especially, you know, I run into so many companies that won’t benefit information in there. And I mean, to me, it would be easier and what we’ve always done to you is to have that in that separate document. It’s just a summary of their benefits that they can hand out as they go through open enrollment. They’re not handing out handbooks. It just seems like that would be so much simpler. And also, you know, for those things that are updated, I mean, if you think about these handbooks,

specifically if you have a large number of people, depending on how you distribute those, I mean, it can get pretty cumbersome. By the time you get the authorization forms, even if you have an HRAS system that you do it through, you gotta communicate, you gotta get them to do it, you gotta track it, and you know that if you have 100 people, there’s gonna be 20 of them that you gotta beg, plead, and kick in the rear to do it, right? And so,

Yeah, so for those things, I definitely agree that it’s better just to leave those out because the less you have to update and redistribute, the better.

Emily (14:41.294)
Yes. And another thing is like you really want to pay attention to how long the handbook is. And so when you when you’re piling all of these separate documents, procedures, benefits, information, all of this, your handbook winds up being hundreds of pages long and no employee is ever going to read hundreds of pages of legalese or anything like that. And then that

works against the employer. So if there were to be an issue in court, the court’s going to want to know if the handbook was easily accessible, if it had been distributed, and then if it was easy to understand for the employee. And if it’s not, or if it’s too long so that the employee never even read it, then the employer is going to run into some issues.

Chris Cooley (15:31.958)
Yeah, and I know you’ve seen these too, because as we’ve gotten handbooks in that to review and they’re like 200 pages and they have every, mean everything under the sun in them. nobody’s gonna read all that. They’re just not. I mean, I think it’s great for, you know, to put it together and to have that information and, you know, in a vacuum, but in reality, they’re not gonna read it. So it’s best just

Emily (15:43.29)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Cooley (16:01.154)
Whatever’s the, I shouldn’t say the minimum, but whatever you have to have in the handbook to get your point and your information across, do it as little as you can, if that makes sense. Yeah, that’s better word. That’s a better word. That’s what we bring you on the podcast.

Emily (16:15.342)
Yeah, just concisely. Like, keep it clear and concise. Yeah. Ha ha, ha ha.

Chris Cooley (16:25.858)
And so, and you know, that lends itself to is so many now, so many companies, know, used to it was, and I say this every podcast, so if anybody listens, they probably hear this all the time. So it’s used to, if you had 20 employees, you were in one state. Now you have 20 employees, maybe in 15 states. And depending on where they are, you know, if you’re in the…

Emily (16:48.538)
That’s right.

Chris Cooley (16:52.192)
the California, Oregon, Washington, the New Yorks, the Illinois, the Colorado’s, those kind of states that are very progressive, those policies grow or those required policies. So stacking all of those in a handbook, we’re talking about length, we can really grow those, right? And so what’s your recommendation on how do we address that for these companies that are in so many different states?

Emily (17:17.208)
We, what we always suggest is having a separate state addendum for each state in which the company operates. And that addendum is going to address those specific state policies. So just like you said, some, it sort of seems like when we see a company with 10 or 15 different states for whatever reason, they are almost always in the more progressive states.

And so they’ll wind up with state addendums of hundreds of pages stacked on top of their 50 page employee handbook. If you’ve got a separate state addendum for an employee that’s in California, all they have to see is your base employee handbook and the California addendum. And now they’re at just 65 pages instead of 300. And so it’s again, a lot less for the employee to sift through and they can focus on what actually is applicable to them.

Chris Cooley (17:51.17)
Yeah.

Chris Cooley (18:11.724)
Yeah, and administratively it’s easier for the company too because if you’ve got all these different states and you’ve got many employees in each state, if California is the only one that has a change, they’re the only ones that you have to update and get the reauthorization. You don’t have to go to all hundred employees.

Emily (18:31.896)
Yeah, that’s absolutely true.

Chris Cooley (18:33.858)
So that’ll make it much, much easier. So as we’re coming down to, we’ve got our handbook, we’re kinda looking at the length and those things. What do you suggest from a review perspective? timing and process and those things.

Emily (18:51.322)
Well, we always suggest at least an annual review. So at the bare minimum, what I would suggest to any company is especially this time of year, because if there’s going to be new legislation that goes into place, it typically is effective on January 1st. So in the fall, if you want to review your old policies and make sure that things especially like your leave policies, your

your wage policies, overtime breaks, things like that, you’ll want to make sure that those are updated going into the new year. And then it is important for employers to try their best to stay abreast of current employment topics, things that are happening and changing in their state legislature. Because if there is a big change, it may not wait until January 1st to go into effect. know Colorado had a big family leave

Family Leave Act that went into effect in September of last year. And so it would have been really important for Colorado employers to make sure their handbooks addressed the new state paid family leave that was effective in September versus January 1st. So it’s at least an annual review at the bare minimum, but as often as possible, try to stay up on the big legislative changes because you might need to go ahead and make those changes before the big handbook review.

Chris Cooley (20:16.842)
Okay, now that makes sense. And so what’s the downside if they don’t do the review or they don’t have a handbook? Where’s our risk there?

Emily (20:28.792)
You know, I think if they don’t have a handbook, first of all, a lot of times managers, employees, they don’t know what they don’t know. So if the company is not setting forth their clear expectations on what they want their policies to be, and in some cases, their procedures to be for certain items, then employees don’t have those clear expectations.

people in general like to know what’s expected of them. It increases morale, it increases understanding across all boards. So that’s the first thing. Secondly, if the company doesn’t have clear policies in place for those things we mentioned earlier, like leave, overtime laws, even discrimination in some jurisdictions, then they can face pretty hefty fines if

if they weren’t following the practices that the state has set forth and then an employee were to file a complaint. So having the document that explains all of those things in one clear, concise space is best for everybody involved.

Chris Cooley (21:38.038)
Yeah, no, and I think that makes sense. I get it, again, for a lot of times, you’re running your business, you’ve got stuff going on every day, you’ve got employee issues, you have all these things, and a lot of times that handbook gets shoved in a drawer and it’s not maintained as it should. And I get that. And we talk to so many people that, well, it really hasn’t been reviewed in five or six years, or 10 years, or whatever that is. And so,

Emily (21:57.359)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Cooley (22:06.786)
I think that is so important to keep that up to date because an out of date handbook that had to your point that has the wrong policies, that’s a risk. And so it’s very important to keep that, you know, to keep those updated.

Emily (22:16.41)
Okay.

Chris Cooley (22:24.258)
So, okay, so we’ve talked about the handbook. So what else? Is there anything else that we kind of need to think about from a handbook perspective? We’ve kind of talked about things that are included, things not to include. Is there anything else that you’d like to end with?

Emily (22:39.716)
You know, I think it’s just really important to maintain good morale with the employees. You know, like I just said, people like to be communicated with. They like to understand what’s expected of them and understand where barriers and lines are. And so it’s just one of my favorite ways for an employer to be able to say,

to their employees, we care about you enough to outline everything you need to know and here it is in a nice little package document for you. It’s great.

Chris Cooley (23:11.97)
Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I think it’s a great tool. I really do. And I think it’s, is important that it stays up to date. And so, well, great. Well, no, I really appreciate you joining us. I think it’s a good topic and I think you, obviously, you know, you do a lot of these and have a lot of knowledge. So I appreciate you joining us.

Emily (23:33.166)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Chris Cooley (23:35.372)
Thank you.