Policies And Procedures
Every business should have policies and procedures in place
Beginning with confidentiality agreements, you want to make sure you protect your customers your business your employees your contractors so this is a very important policy that must take place almost immediately upon opening up your business.
There are many policies and procedures that you will need in place and as you grow, you can continue to add to them, one of the key ones that come to mind is a dress code policy. A dress code policy, believe it or not, is important because you want to be and maintain professional professionalism at all times and even if you are a casual business, you still won’t want to maintain a level of casualness that you are comfortable with. It could be from people wearing shorts it could be from people wearing flip-flops.
It could be too low cut it could be. It could be too short of shorts or skirts. It could be searched with hose in them. It could be pants with holes in them it could be high heels. There is so much to this policy that you want to make sure and be very careful and be vague yet specific. One thing that you may not think of as far as dress code is safety for example, if you allow flip-flops and flip-flops have a high tripping hazard and they get hurt in your place of business then you may be liable before our Worker’s Comp. claim.
Wearing or not wearing certain clothes could lead to harassment or unwelcome, compliments or comments which follows under harassment so therefore you may need a harassment policy you might want to have a safety procedure in place. You may also want to consider a Colin policy when they are expected to call in how they are expected to request for time off what they do they can’t get a hold of you or their supervisor and it’s something so simple with the create so many issues.
You would not think that you would need to include your working hours of the expectation for your employees or contractors to be there in the office or remote are out in the field. It should be specified and you can always add as needed or when called but the hours of business should be included.
You may also want to include pay our time and attendance or discipline process procedure or policy, which clearly outlines the expectations you want to be very careful not to make it too specific and not give yourself any room because you cannot capture all circumstances in one policy, so a policy is needed yes but you also do not want to make it too specific.
In a policy or procedure or process for daily work instructions that you would not think that you would need but let me share a few that you may reconsider for example, are you OK with people smoking in front of your customers or clients? Are you OK with them to tobacco and spitting, are you OK with them vaping are you OK with Smacking gum ? Did it sound like dog shit automatically know what to do and not to do yes it does sound like that but keep in mind policies and procedures I put in place for 20% of your workforce 80% of your workforce will follow and comply automatically, but you will have the small percentage of 20% that all rules are created for now. Keep in mind you may want to say why should I focus on paying a policy for the 20% because it only takes one person one person that can file a complaint and cause you major loss to your business that you have worked so hard for.
What about an on-call policy or procedure? What is the expectation for them to be young for what happens if they don’t answer their phone what happened if they don’t show up when do you want them to show up again? This may not be a problem, but as you grow, this can be a problem and it takes one minor lawsuit that you will have to pay out.
I briefly mentioned discipline process earlier, but it is important to include that there is a discipline process. You want to be vague to not say the specific order because sometimes they may not follow the specific order but enough to include that you do have one and they are trained on it.
Another reason why policies and procedures are good to have is because employees can sign upon on boarding that you have reviewed specific policies and procedures and you include in employee folder. It is also in your best interest that you train your employees on an annual basis on these policies and procedures, some policies and procedures may be OK to be trained every 2 to 3 years but annual is what I recommend. This is for your protection. Does it help? Yes does it remove 100% of the risk now?
Policies and procedures can be done electronically or hardcopy
If you are working with confidential information, you want to have a policy that they are not allowed to share your information with any other employer or anybody else
There is also a HIPAA policy that would be very important to have your employee sign that they will not share any private information.
I would recommend that you have a complete process so your employees know clearly who to contact how to contact and a turnaround of when you would expect to get back to them
The list of policies and procedures can be endless for you at least want to get the key top 10 policies and they may vary per industry per business that you have
It sounds very formal. Sounds like a waste of time but trust me it is not. This will help you for unemployment hearings. This will help you for terminations. This will help you for harassment and it is not 100% guarantee but it sure reduces the risk.