How can you find an employee manual?

When you open a business, whether you start your own or just a franchising business, there are some steps you need to do. Among these you need to have an employee manual for your future employees. Knowing it can take quite some time, there are a few ways in which you can get the manual. The employee manual will greatly depend on the size of your business. If you do a quick on line search, you will see that a lot of commercial sites come up if you input keywords such as "free employee manual template". Of course, these are only templates and you will still have to work on them, but it is a good start!

However, a search of "employee manual" or "employee handbook" (without the word template) brings up listings of a number of actual employee manuals. You can take a look at a few of those and see which ones you can use to help format your own. Have in mind that you cannot just take a manual, as your business might not be the same as the one you are taking the manual from.

If you start a franchising business, you might need to hire someone to do the manual. In this case the costs will be a bit high, but you may consider hiring an independent business person to lower the costs. These people usually charge /hour plus material expenses. Although you have to pay to have the manual done, this will probably save you precious time.

If you do go the even cheaper route, you can pick up an employee manual for about -50 online. You can also check for examples that you can look at to structure your own. However, take care! Be sure and have your insurance agent and lawyer take a look at it before implementing it, and be sure to place right inside the front cover some type of disclaimer that it is a living document and as such, is subject to change with or without notice.

Probably the best thing to do, especially when franchising or starting up a small business, is to make the manual yourself. A lot of new business owners buy templates, cross them with the SBA samples and, in the end, wind up writing their own. You can spend many late nights with the good old coffee pot, working so hard on it, but in the end you will be so happy with your result that you might just consider marketing it. If you do decide to give it a try, here are the basic guidelines that you must include in your manual:

- Chief Executive's Welcome
- About the Company and Expectations
- Role of the Employee
- Code of Conduct
- Equity and Diversity
- Customer Service
- Training and Development
- Electronic Communication Guidelines
- Pay and Benefits
- Personal Files
- Dispute Resolution
- Whistleblowers
- Union
- Conditions of Employment
- Awards
- Hours of Work, Flextime
- Leave
- Overtime
- Probation
- Your Safety Occupational Health and Safety (OHSA)
- Organization Charts

About The Author-- Any new business needs to have certain documents in order to start its activity; and the Employee manual is no exception. Whether you are Franchising or opening your brand new and original business, you will definitely need such a manual.

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