Because “one size does not fit all.” And because “you get what you pay for.”
In “a whopper of a sexual harrassment claim” (thanks to blog author Jon Hyman for the turn of phrase I couldn’t resist), the case of EEOC v. V & J Foods, Inc., a Burger King franchise had an employee manual that outlined the procedures to be followed in a sexual harassment grievance. However, the policy was written in a convoluted and confusing manner and–significantly–provided no way to bypass a harassing supervisor. When a part-time teenage employee ran into a problem with her supervisor, she didn’t follow the grievance procedure in the manual.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t care that she didn’t follow the proper procedure. The employment manual wasn’t clear to the average employee (in this case the average employee would be a teenager or high school graduate). In fact, the court found that the complaint procedure was confusing even for adults and, as a result, the grievance process was unreasonable.
The issue for your employment manuals is that they need to be clear and easily understood. If you do download them from the internet, make sure you show them to your attorney in order to demystify the boilerplate and insert the right provisions for your business. Otherwise, you could end up with a document full of policies and procedures that no one is required to follow.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 8:38 am and is filed under Employees, Running Your Company, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.5 Responses to “Why Not to Download Your Employee Handbook from the Internet”
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February 24th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I believe your comment on having an attorney review a downloaded Employee Handbook is generally correct. As a business and employment lawyer and founder of http://www.fingertipmanuals.com, http://www.employeehandbookpolicymanual.com and http://www.restaurantemployeehandbook.net, I do give similar advise to customers who are considering purchasing an Employee Handbook.
I point out that it is important to consider the experience of the author of the Employee Handbook, the type of business that will make use of the downloaded manual, changes to the manual the purchaser wants to make to the policies and if such changes can be accomplished without violating the law. We do encourage customers to seek an attorney’s advise before making substantive changes.
For example, all of our sites offer employee handbook policy manuals which I have written for each state, D.C. and Puerto Rico; in English and Spanish. Each Manual complies with both federal and each state’s laws.
One advantage of our downloaded Employee Handbook is that we are able to keep each state’s Employee Handbook current so that on the day a business downloads the Handbook, the Employee Handbook meets a particular state’s laws as well as federal law in effect on that date. We also offer an update service to keep the employee handbooks current as laws change. This is a distinct advantage in ordering a downloaded Employee Handbook from the proper internet site.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Of everything I’ve written over the past nearly two years, it may be that title of which I’m most proud.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:56 am
I think you made some good points
May 1st, 2009 at 6:08 am
really nice post.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Interesting post, Information provided is of great help to the newbie’s, Thanks for sharing.