What are employment policies and practices?

They should guide how your business handles delicate situations, among other things.

For example, managing poor performance and absences would be classed as delicate situations.

Why are they important?

Keep your staff. Formal policies and procedures are like a guide for employees on how to behave in the workplace. They also give your staff some stability, which is essential to create a safe and happy business environment.

Save time. Fed up of treating each HR-related issue on a case-by-case basis? Bring in policies and practices and you'll have concrete guidelines to follow.

Improve your image. Up-to-date policies and procedures highlight how stable your business is. This'll build on your already positive reputation – helping you attract both staff and new customers.

Ready to get started?

Employment law, the basics

The UK employment law is different, depending on the size of your business. The CIPD website can help you learn about the policies you legally must have in place.

So, how do you create and implement your policy?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) is the perfect starting point. Their HR policy guide is full of information on how to create and develop policies.

Crucially, the guide will also help you communicate the new policies to your employees.

Pull together an employee handbook

The last step is to create an employee handbook and make it accessible to all members of staff. This'll help them understand your policies and practices, so they can put them into action.

Workable has a great guide which can help you create a handbook to communicate your policies and procedures to employees. It's easy to get started – they have free templates and a list of what you should include.