Employee Handbook Examples

Putting together an employee handbook for your company might make you feel like you need some help to get started.

Our employee handbook template will help you turn policies and procedures into fun and interactive content that will be memorable for all employees. Say goodbye to spending time answering simple questions your employees skimmed over and hello to the employee manual everyone will love.

What our employee handbook template looks like above!

Jump into our employee handbook template now

With our employee handbook template ready for you to use and customize as you wish, you can switch screens, add in screens, and drag and drop your content into wheel spinners, timelines, quizzes, and so much more.

Sounds fun, right? Test out our employee handbook template now in our 7 Day Free Trial and click the 'Create a course' button when you gain access, and you'll see the template ready to use.

If you're building an employee handbook for the first time and unsure what to include, our guide below will help you nail the crucial elements you need. Ultimately you'll be helping your employees feel included, respected, and excited to work for a forward-thinking company.

Now, let's get ready to turn you into a workplace hero.

What is an employee handbook?

Unsure what is an employee handbook? It is an essential document that all companies need to have in place. While it might be known as a staff manual or an employee field guide, an employee handbook is a document that holds the company policies, mission statement, and everything a new employee should receive on their first day of work.

The employee handbook should provide everything from the company culture to work rights, policies, and so much more. Although it will be handed to new employees during the onboarding process, it's also a document that all employees can look over at any time instead of bothering HR with questions.

What is usually included in an employee handbook?

Wondering what most companies include in their employee handbook? While you have to remember that every single employee manual will be completely different, there are a few core values that each company will include. You'll want to include the following;

• Employee expectations are set in place, so the employees know what is expected, but also what they will expect from the company
• Company policies which include diversity & inclusion, annual leave, sick days, and much more
• Legal documents which include your employee's rights and standard obligations to their employment
• Company culture, company values, and a mission statement

When should your company build an employee handbook?

While it's not a legal requirement to have an employee manual in the office, there are so many benefits you should know.

Firstly, having an employee handbook to give to your new employees doesn't only start them off on the right track; they'll feel confident to know you have policies and procedures in place for employees to access any time.

Having the company's mission statement, values, culture, and so much more in place will help your new hires settle into the company much quicker than them walking in blind to the job. You can send the employee handbook out to them before they start their first day to help them understand more about the company and what their job entails.

If you have any conflicts between colleagues, having an employee handbook in place is crucial to have on hand if and when it's needed. This will help resolve any issues in the workplace with ease.

Before you build your employee handbook

Before you think about putting your employee handbook together, you might like to think about the following to help you get started.

1. Get the leadership team together

First things first, get the leadership team together to discuss the basic outline of the content you're going to include. You'll also want to sit down and discuss the why, the direction of the company, what the core values are, and of course, implementing the mission and vision.

To gather a starting point, write down a list of what the contents page will look like in order of priority. This will help you see which stakeholders will be responsible for each section of the employee manual.

2. Include other stakeholders

Once you've got your key points to discuss, you'll need to loop in other stakeholders to be accountable for relevant sections of the handbook. That's right; the employee handbook isn't the responsibility of HR or Personnel! You'll need to include other stakeholders such as the Marketing Team and Finance Team, for example.

3. Build the manual easily with the Coassemble employee handbook template

If you want to get started straight away, try Coassemble's employee handbook template to help you bring your vision to life with an engaging and interactive course that's waiting for you to use. Although we'll talk more about it later in this article, expect to be able to keep your employee handbook up to date easily when you use Coassemble's online training platform.

How to build your employee handbook

Now we've covered the basics, let's get you thinking about the content you'll need to include to build your employee handbook. There's quite a lot of information you'll need to have, so luckily, you can use our employee handbook guide to help you set the company rules straight. Include the correct legal documents and everything else that's needed for all employee handbooks!

Company Narrative

An employee handbook shouldn't start without explaining the company story first. This is where you'll want to involve the marketing team to help you put together the brand story and what motivates the business and every employee who works there. You might like to use the brand tone and voice throughout the handbook so the new employees can understand who the company is quickly.

Think about writing the company narrative in a relatable way that will quickly engage with your new hires. You could answer basic questions like: when did the company start? How did it grow? Where is the company heading? etc.

You'll also want to include the company history, mission, vision and values. Think about answering questions such as: what is the company mission? What problems are you trying to solve for your customers? What is the vision for the company, and what does the company culture and ethos look like?

Include employment basics

The employment basics will help your new employees understand the meaning behind the terms in their contract. Rather than waste time answering basic questions, they can use this section of the employment handbook to understand anything they may have missed during the recruitment process.

Ideally, you'll need to define the difference between full-time and part-time employees. You'll also need to cover the difference between interns, freelancers, contractors, and any other type of contract you cover within the workplace.

You can't put together an employee handbook without mentioning equal opportunity employment in the workplace. This is a legal necessity but a culture that new hires will gain respect in the business.

Talk about work hours and attendance, so the employees know what hours are expected of them and what they need to do if they need to call in sick or have an emergency to attend to.

Terms of employment

In terms of employment, you'll need to highlight what an employee needs to do if they miss work. Will they need to provide notice, and how much? You'll also need to clarify what time off looks like for different contracts. As a freelancer, will they be entitled to annual leave?

Code of conduct

The code of conduct is an essential part of the employee handbook so that new hires will understand how to treat others in the workplace. While you're building trust with your employees, you might like to include the following content;

Cyber security - you'll need to have guidelines in place for using phones, computers, social media, and using the company internet connection. Employees must know what to do if a device is stolen or lost and what they'll need to return at the end of employment with the company.

Dress code - Although it might sound a bit old fashion, your company may have a strict dress code if it's a corporate office. Let your new employees feel comfortable when walking into the office on the first day appropriately dressed. Will they need to wear a suit to work every day or does the CEO rock a baseball hat and jeans?

Conflict of interest - Inform employees about the conflict of interest and how it may impact their work. This could be anything from a personal goal or an ethical issue. If you have any conflict issues, it's best to speak to the human resources department.

Workplace visitors - New employees will need to know what processes are in place to bring visitors into the office. You'll need to think about company security & data, as well as making sure all employees are safe.

Employee relationships - While it's not uncommon to see an employment relationship blossom, you may have guidelines about professionally behaving around team members. Getting along with colleagues is crucial for all businesses, but there is a line for dating managers, making sexual jokes or misogynistic remarks. You'll also want to outline the prospect of the employment relationship of hiring relatives as well.

Workplace policies

When it comes to company rules and workplace policies, you'll need to have a few crucial elements in place. As we mentioned above, think about data privacy and security. You'll need a compliant legal policy that will indicate what employees can gain access to within the business. You might like to highlight what they will need to delete when and where.

You might like to include a section on harassment and non-discrimination so that you're creating a safe workplace for your staff. Highlight the sexual harassment policies to access the legal information quickly if they have any concerns or questions to ask the human resources department.

And, you'll need to think about having a health & safety policy in place. What will employees need to do if there is an accident or the fire alarm goes off? You'll need to answer these standard questions before new employees join the company.

Employee compensation and development policy

Keep your employees motivated to work hard and produce results by educating them about payment and overtime policies. They'll need to know when and how they will be getting paid, which will include performance management.

When your employees understand their job responsibilities and goals they need to reach, it will help them stay on track and push themselves to learn new skills, helping them grow professionally. You might like to give incentives along the employee's journey such as performance reviews, bonuses, pay increases, and more.

Benefits and perks to the company

With the market becoming increasingly competitive, you'll need to highlight the employee benefits and perks to hire top talent. There are so many ways you can get creative to bring on board the best hires. With employee health being a huge incentive, especially since the pandemic started, you might like to offer a 'me day' once a quarter to give staff an extra day off to do something for themselves.

While working from home is becoming more normal for many companies, it opens up more time and space for your employees to have to themselves. Why not introduce more work-from-home days if you're not already doing so?

You might also like to offer a company car and company phone as an incentive or even do something simple like ordering in donuts for the office once a week or free gym membership. When stating company perks and benefits, state what employee expenses look like and how to claim reimbursements.

Vacations, sick time, and annual leave

Ensure your employees understand how much annual leave they can take off and whether there's an internal structure around the busiest times of the year when they are needed in the office. They'll need to know how much notice they'll need to give for time off, how long they can take off at any given time, and how to submit leave as well.

Put together a sick day policy, so employees will know how many paid sick days they are allocated a year. You'll need to understand how to deal with a long-term illness and bereavement leave.

If an employee is called up for jury duty, make sure you have a policy in place so team members can act quickly if needed.

And lastly, you'll need paternal leave for men and women. How will you outline how long new Moms and Dads will be able to take off and whether it's paid or unpaid leave?

Ending or terminating employment

At the end of the employee handbook, have a section carved out about ending employment. Obviously, it's the last thing you want to mention when a new hire starts, but you'll need to have employment policies in place for when employment ends.

If an employee resigns, they'll need to know how much notice they are supposed to give, whether during or after the probation period. If you terminate the employment, you'll need to have a step-by-step policy to make sure team members can manage the off-boarding process.

When the employment ends, you'll need to share what happens to sick leave pay, annual leave pay and the rest of the month pay as well.

Using Coassemble's employee handbook template

Looking for the best employee handbook examples? Luckily you can simply use Coassemble's great employee handbook template to help you get started. Jump onto our 7 Day Free Trial, and you'll be able to access our employee handbook template ready for you to use.

Our instructional designers are lending you a hand with their creative skills, so you don't have to spend time trying to build your employee manual. When you jump onto the free trial, you'll instantly notice how engaging and interactive your employee handbook will look. As a crucial element to keep your employees engaged from the start, you can make your workplace safety documents and legal obligations look so slick; your employee policies won't have ever looked this good before.

In the 7 Day Free Trial, test our out platform and see if it's the right fit to build your epic employee handbook. And, chat to our US-based team on our Live Chat and ask as many questions as you like so we can help you build it.

You'll find the following lesson screens within the template you can easily customize and make your own:

• Welcome note
• Company culture
• Mission statement
• Code of conduct
• Workplace procedures
• Communication policies
• Leave
• Training and development
• Ending your employment
• Thanks
• Summary quiz

You can add screens, move screens and customize your content to build the employee handbook you'll be proud of. Or, if you prefer, start a new course from scratch and add the screens as you go.

30+ lesson screens to choose from

With 30+ lesson screen templates to choose from, you'll be able to bring your content to life by using them to create an interactive presentation. For example, our popular wheel lesson screen helps you distribute your content into bite-sized interactive pieces. You also might like to use our timeline screen to add to the employee handbook.

Add in a quiz (find out more about our quiz screen here) to break the content up, as you'll see in our employee handbook template, and make learning fun so that your team and stakeholders understand all aspects of the manual as soon as they join the company.

There are plenty of ways to bring your content to life; you'll love using our lesson screen templates to help you see how easy it is to make it happen.

Gain access to more than an employee handbook template

Coassemble offers much more than training templates to help make your life easier!

Our US-based training experts will help you build a training experience that will instantly make sense to everyone who needs to be involved in it. Drop our team a message in our Live Chat feature on this site, and they'll be able to answer any questions you might have about getting started with your training.

• You'll discover how to build a genuinely awesome training course that will knock the socks off your team and other stakeholders.
• You'll learn how to send your training program pro-actively so it doesn't get lost in a sea of spam.
• You'll also gain access to understanding how your team engaged with your training through our excellent analytics tool.
• You can ask for feedback from your team about how they found your training so you can continually improve and update it when needed.

Try Coassemble for FREE today!

Try out 7-day free trial here so you can see if Coassemble is what you've been looking for (we know it is!).

Test out our awesome lesson screen templates and have fun discovering how much you can get out of using our system to keep your training together.

Send our team a message on Live Chat so we can answer any questions you might have about getting started, and you'll realize that within 7 days, we'll turn you into the workplace hero!