Every business is different and likes to go about things in a slightly different way.

Making certain your employees understand how your business operates is key to ensuring that the employee and employer relationship runs as smoothly as possible.

Having a well-drafted staff handbook setting out the way in which your business approaches a range of key topics can help to make sure you get the very best from your employees.

We can help you to manage your relationships with your staff through good policies and documentation.

How we can help

If you would like to create a staff handbook, or if you have one but would like it reviewed, please contact our Employment team, and we can chat you through how best to approach this project.

What does a staff handbook cover?

A staff handbook is really a collection of policies, informing your staff about what the position of the business is in relation to some common topics, as well as what your expectations are of them.

The policies that can be included in a staff handbook can range from the sorts of policies we would advise every business to have (things like sickness policy, maternity and paternity leave, holiday policy, disciplinary and grievance processes), to those that help to protect the business from liability (such as data protection policies and anti-bribery and corruption policies), through to those that may be more bespoke to your business (for example policies relating to certain staff benefits or policies about how your business interacts with its customers).

A good staff handbook should act as something of a manual for your employees, giving them further information about what they can expect and what is expected of them, across a wide range of things that will crop up during their employment.

How do I go about creating a staff handbook?

Our Employment team can guide you through the process of creating a staff handbook.

We start by sharing with you our menu of possible policies. These include the policies that we would strongly recommend that you include in the handbook, to those that are less critical but may complement your particular business.

Once you have decided which policies you would like to include, we take some details from you about how your business would like to approach certain things and we are then able to produce a draft handbook for your review.

We can keep making tweaks and changes to this until the handbook is a perfect reflection of your business.

I already have a staff handbook

Employment law is a rapidly changing area. When changes in the law happen it can mean that your existing policies are no longer compliant and may even leave your business open to costly employment claims.

For this reason it is good practice to have your policies and staff handbook reviewed every so often.

Our Employment team can review your existing policies and recommend changes to ensure they are fully up to date, as well as suggest additional policies which may benefit your business but which are missing from your current handbook.

Recognised and recommended

Our Employment team are recognised in The Legal 500 UK for “a friendly yet extremely professional attitude with 100% commitment to do the best for its clients.”

I used Fosters for an employment matter and the service I received was excellent. Timely, pragmatic, supportive and at a reasonable cost.
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