Seven Items to Consider Adding to You Employee Handbook for 2012
It is almost 2012 and here is a list of seven items you want to make sure you have, or consider adding, to your employee handbook for the new year.
- Social Media Policy providing employees with proper guidance on acceptable and unacceptable uses of social media and containing a disclaimer that no provision of the policy is intended to infringe on employees' NLRA Section 7 rights (i.e., to engage in concerted activity for their mutual aid and protection and to collectively bargain).
- Social media policy that incorporates provisions regarding employee endorsements that comply with the Federal Trade Commissions guidance on those endorsements.
- Consider adding a mutual Waiver of Jury Trial or class action/collective action waiver --or some other form of alternative dispute resolution. Check with your employment attorney to make sure the form in which you implement this renders it enforceable.
- Updated FMLA policy implementing the changes from 2008 and 2009 amendments if you have not had the policy updated since then.
- Policy regarding the employer's commitment to providing reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities and explaining the process an employee can initiate to request reasonable accommodation.
- Ensuring that any neutral absence control or maximum duration of leave policy carves out protected leave such as FMLA, military leave and leave provided as a reasonable accommodation to a qualified individual with a disability.
- A provision prohibiting the surreptitious audio or video recording by employees during working hours or while on the employer's property along with a NLRA section 7 disclaimer.
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