City Council received an overview how to rework the Employee Handbook from Joanne Stacey during a workshop following the special Council meeting on Wednesday.
“You need an employee handbook,” Stacey said. “You cannot do raises, discipline, etc… unless you have that. There are two handbooks out there. One was in July 2016, but it had a policy for everything. It was cut and pasted from the internet. Then there was one that was a more scaled down version from earlier. It was more like an employee handbook.”
As an example, Stacey created a sample Time Away from Work policy that was a combination of the two handbooks for Council to review.”
“You can go with something like a loose-leaf notebook,” Stacey said. “That way you don’t’ have to go with everything all at once.
“I do want to say, I did meet with three managers. I told them why I was there and the question from some was ‘why do we even need this?’ As an HR professional, I asked ‘how do you know what to do?’ One policy example was that vacation could be taken after six months, while another said after one year. It’s important to have something to give to your new employees.
If we’re going to do this, there’s a payout that has to happen, so we’re all level set and we all start from the same place.”
A single sheet was supplied providing information on how much vacation time that is accrued earned vacation for various employees. One employee has 768.08 hours of accrued time for a total of $14,213.27 owed to them at this time. The next highest is 226.48 hours accrued.
“We have a varied of policy books that have been mildly adhered to over the years and we have the common bucket of what we’ve been doing,” said Mayor Rob Baker. “Part of this process is us deciding this is the process and policy we’re going to approve and then true-up everyone so all employees start on the same level. We want to be fair to new employees coming in and not penalizing existing employees. If any one of these people leave, we’ll be writing that check to them.”
“[The sample policy] literally stops this practice and gets everyone on the same field.,” said Stacey. “The other thing I want to be very clear on is pushback on whether this needs to happen or not. We’re just getting started. We have to train the employees to get them in the know. There are things that council needs to be aware of and think about.
“Some employees were not happy about holidays. Melissa has gotten input on these. I’d suggest we start with the Time Away from work. You can always revise a policy, but you need to get something in writing first. “
Stacey also pointed out that Lastly, you need job descirptions. You can’t discipline or reviews without job descriptions.
It’s about the good and the bad and pointing out the rules, but also about filling vacancies.
You canot hold people accountable during vacation time if there’s no one to back them up and continue to get the job done.
We need a backup in case an employee gets hurt and is going to be out for 2-3 weeks, that job just can’t sit there. Hollis
We want to make sure as we go through and re-tool this document make sure we don’t penalize and if it seems like it is, explain it and get to where it might n ot be as stringent. We’ve got liability that is all over the place and having inconsistent policies and procedures in a huge legal matter. Change is tough so we’ve got to do an education through the process. We do want employee input throughout the process.
Where do we go next? Baker
“I think the next thing is to vacation, bereavement, jury duty, sick leave or time away from work and write those and let you do a Passover, have attorney look at it, and then meet with employees and go over it,” said Stacey. “And start that way. There will be some that don’t like it.”
“Well, first off we need to know what’ going to be exactly what’s in the handbook,” said Alderman Richard Turner. “These are the things we’re going to look out and delineate that before we take one issue and do it.”
Stacey indicated she would be able to produce that list easily and distribute.
Turner also indicated his desire to supply employees with an entire handbook of what is currently in existence now, and then move forward with revising, instead of creating a book as they go forward.