#111 May/Jun 2000

Creating Your Employee Handbook

Creating Your Employee Handbook, by Leyna Bernstein and the Management Center, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000. 256 pp. Need an employee manual, but don’t know where to start? Creating Your Employee Handbook […]

Creating Your Employee Handbook, by Leyna Bernstein and the Management Center, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000. 256 pp.


Need an employee manual, but don’t know where to start? Creating Your Employee Handbook can help you out. It gives three sample versions – for small, medium/traditional, and large/”leading edge” organizations – of each of the parts and policies that go into an employee handbook. Sidebars highlight some of the key things to consider when forming each policy for yourself.

The accompanying disk (MS Word) makes creating your own handbook file a simple matter of cut and paste, but assumes that an organization will generally pull all its policies from only one of their three categories, making anyone who wants to pick and choose switch awkwardly back and forth between three different documents.

The book is aimed at social service agencies, so development and advocacy organizations will have to tweak the language a little, but it’s not too much work. A few important topics are missing, including limits on lobbying for 501(c)3 organizations and an explanation of governance structures, and the sample forms section could be expanded. Overall, however, this is a worthwhile investment to get you over that initial hurdle to getting something down on paper!

You can order this book through Shelterforce’s Online Bookstore

OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE

  • Renewing Bonds

    May 1, 2000

    President Harry Truman’s pledge to address the postwar housing shortage and the problem of urban slums played a key role in his 1948 presidential victory. During the campaign, Truman declared […]

  • All the Issues in Workers’ Lives

    May 1, 2000

    Challenging the notion that unions should limit themselves to workplace concerns, breaking new ground on how to connect labor and community issues, exploring the relationship between the fight over economic issues and racial justice, and creating what some think actually has the look, feel, and smell of a social movement.

  • Back to the Streets

    May 1, 2000

    April 15th was a busy day in Washington, DC this year. A week of rallies, protests, teach-ins, nonviolence trainings, and preemptive police action was reaching its peak, and mass protests […]