You work hard to grow and manage your business. To you there’s nothing small about it.

 

Some business consultants look at prospective clients as small businesses and not worth their time. NW Human Resource Strategies doesn’t look at businesses like yours as ‘small’ business at all.

 

Rather, we look at your business as an emerging business. And emerging businesses like yours, whether you’ve set a strategic limit on how large you want to grow or not, are constantly emerging and evolving. Whether you’re ramping up and adding staff or simply want to manage your existing staff more effectively with HR policies and procedures to help you keep in compliance, NW Human Resource Strategies has the expertise and human resources tools you need to grow forward.

 

The Employee Handbook

Emerging businesses like yours are our primary focus, so we understand the unique challenges and opportunities you face each day and are equipped to help you meet and capitalize on them. The Small Business Administration states that owners of emerging business can spend up to 40% of the workday dealing with employee related issues and paperwork.

 

One of the most important steps you can take to refocus your efforts on running your business rather than handling these types of issues is to develop an Employee Handbook – even if you have fewer than 10 employees.

Creating an employee handbook that is regularly kept up to date and in compliance with employment laws and regulations will ensure clarity with employees about your policies and expectations and ward off potential problems. Here’s what the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries has to say in the Employer Assistance Advice Column, “Policy? I need a Policy?”:

 

If there is no policy the employer’s past actions become policy, because there is simply no information to draw on… Workplace policies are a great way to save both parties time, confusion and frustration. We urge you to draft workplace policies…distribute them and provide training for your employees. As for getting started it is suggested to just get the first 10 or 15 elements you want your employees to know about their workplace and to get a broader picture as you fill in the details as you go along.

 

After going over the Handbook it is good to have employees sign the Acknowledgment Form then file that in each employee’s file.

 

It’s that simple…

 

Resources:

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI)
American Society of Training and Development (ASTD)
Organizational Development Network (ODN)