A healthy and well-defined employer-employee relationship is an essential part of the successful operation of any business. It is important to ensure that the rights and responsibilities within this relationship are understood and agreed upon. A set of policies and procedures that define and enforce this relationship will not only avoid conflict and provide for a consistent application of the rules, but will also allow for the parties to have some sort of authority to stand upon if a disagreement does occur. Without policies and procedures that are comprehensive and properly communicated, a full and complete understanding of the rights and responsibilities in the employer-employee relationship cannot be adequately achieved.

What Should My Policies and Procedures Cover?

Each business’s needs are different. For that very reason, it follows that each business’s policies and procedures should be different. Poorly planned policies and procedures have the potential to get both the employer and the employee in trouble, so a company should never rely on a standard or form-based set of policies and procedures.  Doing so will inevitably lead to weaknesses on both ends: there will be certain policies that are overly restrictive, needlessly harming the ability of employees to act freely, and others that are too weak—or do not even exist—failing to communicate and lead an important aspect of your businesses. Without comprehensive policies and procedures, many of the necessary rights and responsibilities of both parties will be unknown and unenforceable.

Standard Policy and Procedure Provisions

That being said, there are certain issues that will need to be covered in every set of policies and procedures. Even standard provisions, however, will require nonstandard applications—just because every business should have, for example, policies towards holidays, does not mean that every business should have the same holiday policies. The needs of each particular business will determine how these standard provisions apply. For this reason, even if you think that your business is simple enough to work with a standard set of policies and procedures, you should never use a standard form found in a book or a web search—policies and procedures not drafted with your own unique needs in mind will always fail to meet your needs.

The Importance of Communication

Still, it is not enough to simply make your company’s policies and procedures personalized and comprehensive: they need to be simple to follow, clearly communicated, and easily understandable. An overly long list of complicated rules written in legalese won’t help anyone: the people who are supposed to follow the rules will be confused and overwhelmed by an overly long and complex set of policies, and they’ll end up ignoring even the most basic and important aspects. To solve this problem, a balance needs to be struck: policies and procedures need to cover all of what is important while not becoming needlessly over-regulatory. This will ensure that policies and procedures are easily digestible and compact enough to be properly followed, while still communicating and protecting your company’s most important ideals.

We Can Help

At Bailey Law Firm, we understand the importance of creating and implementing a comprehensive and comprehensible set of policies and procedures tailor-made to meet your business’s needs. If you would like to meet with our attorneys to discuss your business’s policies and procedures, please contact us with any questions by clicking here or by calling our office at 832.510.2900 to schedule a complimentary consultation.