Employee Handbook: Reduce Your Risk of Lawsuit
Why do you need an Employee Handbook? For the same reason every other medical office or group needs one, whether they have 4 or 60 employees: protection, certainty, and effectiveness.
A good handbook helps you manage fairly. And when there are complaints about the guidelines in the handbook, you can blame the nameless attorney who put it together. The main reasons for having a handbook, though, are to establish an “at will” employment relationship, describe a clear code of conduct for all employees, and inform staff of rules and benefits.
Employment at Will
The legal term, “Employment at Will,” if properly applied, allows you to remain in control over who works for you. From a legal perspective, it may well be the main reason for having the handbook. It protects your practice against unwanted lawsuits, and allows you as the employer to terminate an unsatisfactory employee for any reason — with or without cause and without notice. Of course, it also allows the employee to quit work for any reason without cause or notice.
Without such a provision, employees who are let go could assert that they had a contractual relationship with the employer that required “just cause” for termination as defined by state statute and case law.
You will find the correct wording of the “at-will” paragraph for your Employee Handbook in The Doctor’s Wealth Preservation Guide. It should be on the very first page of your office’s handbook and be bolded and underlined.
Code of Conduct
Another key reason for having a handbook is to provide a Code of Conduct for all staff to follow in the office. The handbook should be given to every employee, including each physician. Why would the physicians need a handbook too? The Code of Conduct has a harassment policy, and a lot of the harassment lawsuits in medical offices come from physicians sexually harassing their staff.
You need a Clear Code of Conduct to let your employees know what is expected from them. It will also give them the confidence that if they act accordingly, they will not be likely to get in trouble. While this may appear to contradict the “employment at will” clause, both of these are really necessary, and a technically correct handbook provides both a code of conduct and the ability to let an employee go without fear of litigation.
You will also need a section on harassment. Should it ever come to a harassment lawsuit, your office will be much better positioned if harassment is explicitly prohibited in your handbook. If you would like to know the exact harassment section from the handbook I put together, you can find a copy of it in The Doctor’s Wealth Preservation Guide.
Rules and Benefits
Your handbook should also provide your employees with the rules and benefits of the office. Having those in writing allows an administrator to manage staff easily and in a non-confrontational manner.
If you have never had a handbook before, there may be some resistance at first, depending on whether benefits are being cut, increased, or merely codified. However, you will soon find that the handbook eliminates debates and disagreements.
One important area that needs to be covered in the handbook is the process to allow employees to take time off. Since the medical office setting is almost entirely an hourly work environment, detailed guidelines are necessary to ensure proper functioning of the office. The Doctor’s Wealth Preservation Guide, you will find a detailed procedure, along with the exact Time Off Request form I used, that will allow you to streamline the time off approval process.
A related issue concerns rules about sick days and personal days. Those too should be detailed in the handbook, along with guidelines for overtime and vacation. You’ll find a specific suggestion for how to cut down on the use of personal and sick days in The Doctor’s Wealth Preservation Guide. There are many other possible provisions that can be covered in a handbook, from policies about fraternization to confidentiality policies, non-smoking policies, performance reviews, and much more. Once again, you may want to refer to The Doctor’s Wealth Preservation Guide for details.
If your office already has a handbook and it contains all the elements described above, you might be able to get away with simply updating your existing handbook. If it does not, however, you may be better off starting from scratch. Be sure to get help from an attorney as you develop your policies. Getting sound legal advice now, while it may be expensive, could save you a great deal of money later, on issues such as overtime, sick time, personal time, and more.
Last but not least, be sure to make your handbook as inclusive and specific as possible. It will make your office run much more smoothly and prevent all kinds of complications.
