'What does it say in your handbook?'

Class offers advice for employers

Cindy Carpenter thinks the employee handbook has gotten a bad rap in the workplace.

It's often tucked away on some forgotten shelf and never comes into play until a problem arises. The employee gets the book thrown at him, walks away disgruntled and, ultimately, the employer ends up with a figurative black eye.

Carpenter, a Kalispell business consultant, has a better idea.

"I would like to see the employee handbook be a positive tool," Carpenter said.

She's facilitating a new class at Flathead Valley Community College to show business owners and human resource managers how that's possible.

Employee Handbook Series: Building Relationships with Your Employees is a 10-week session that starts Sept. 18 and runs from 8 to 10 a.m. Thursdays through Nov. 20. It's in FVCC's Arts and Technology Building, in Room 236, named the First Interstate Workforce Training Lab for the $25,000 grant from that bank.

Carpenter owns Cindy Carpenter Business Services Inc., is a certified human resources professional with 25 years of training experience, and is an adjunct faculty member for Workforce Training at Flathead Valley Community College.

A good handbook can be a solid source of job information, help keep good employees and force an employer to think clearly about the workplace culture.

Mora McCarthy has learned that being clear about the workplace culture is a very good idea, particularly in a changing work world filled with employees tuned in to employment law.

McCarthy is a business resource consultant at the Flathead One-Stop Workforce Center and said she gets questions all the time from business owners wondering how to handle workplace issues.

"The first thing I ask them is, 'What does it say in your employee handbook?'" McCarthy said.

In a state where more than 90 percent of businesses have 10 or fewer employees and some employers see no need - or have neither the time nor the resources - to put policies in writing, many in the Flathead duck their head a bit at McCarthy's question. They admit it would be a good idea to have a handbook or at least know what it says.

So the two women are teaming up with Jodi Smith, Workforce Training Director at FVCC's Continuing Education Center, for the class targeting business owners and human resource managers. The Workforce Training center equipped its lab with 13 computers and software called Policies Now, a complete employee handbook template that is easily customized to specific businesses.

Carpenter will guide participants through the software as they write their own handbooks, suggest resources along the way, point out Montana employment statute and send them back to the office with three-ring binders filled with resource lists, handbooks, letters and forms tailored to their own businesses. Kalispell employment law attorney Dan Johns will wrap up the final session with a legal perspective.

The first class already is more than half filled - by businesses with a half-dozen employees and with dozens of employees, a nonprofit and several for-profits, large retail, heavy equipment, fitness and auto parts businesses.

"Since they will be sitting right here," Smith said, "they can input whatever they want" and get precisely what their business needs by working from the Policies Now template.

Both the FVCC lab and the job service have copies available for use by any business. Others will choose to buy the software and use it in-house.

Regardless, Carpenter, McCarthy and Smith insist class participants must know this: When you reach the final draft, get legal review.

"Both sides can win" if employee policies are not in writing, Johns said. "But it becomes a dispute of who said and represented what. If it's written down, it's just a matter of whether it was applied correctly."

Consistency is critical, but if a policy is not in writing it "can bring into question whether the policy exists," Johns said.

"You're setting a policy by practice," McCarthy said. "Just because you don't have it in writing doesn't mean you don't have a policy. Policy by practice is just as powerful."

The question of who needs to have an employee handbook has no black-and-white answer, Johns said. Companies of 15 or more employees fall under enforcement of the federal discrimination law, he said, but he's seen companies of all sizes subjected to it. In Montana law, there is no minimum size.

"The consensus is strongly in favor of having an employee handbook," he said. "It gives the opportunity to clearly define policies and procedures, and then they can be applied consistently."

Sexual harassment accusations, he said, are a prime example of the value of a written policy. Two federal cases hold that a well-articulated sexual harassment policy can be used as a defense and means to investigation.

"It's unfair to say everyone needs" an employee handbook, Johns said. "But they'll have to weigh it out."

Business owners who think it just may be time to step up to the plate will want to look into the new class offering.

"This is a whole awakening and awareness of how you can implement this," Carpenter said, and have the process not be so painful.

The 10-week Employee Handbook Series is limited to 12 participants. Extra classes may be scheduled this fall, based on demand. Cost is $250 for up to two individuals from the same organization.

To register, contact the FVCC Continuing Education Center at 756-3832 or ceinfo@fvcc.edu

Online, visit www.employflathead.com