Employee Handbook Checklist: Required Changes for 2024

As the workplace and society transform dramatically, your employee handbook should change, too

In this 75-minute interactive online training, you will learn:

"Must do" handbook changes.
Discover the new or updated compliance requirements for 2024, including rules for pregnancy accommodations and nursing moms.
New laws and Supreme Court updates.
Know what your handbook should say about remote work, gun policies, abortion, religious expression, and more.
The 12 most common mistakes.
Learn how to spot a dozen legally dangerous (but easily fixable) mistakes that are likely hiding in your handbook.

HR’s most important task: Keeping your employee handbook updated and legally compliant

Important rulings from the Supreme Court require you to rethink policies and practices on weapons, health care, religious expression, and religious accommodations. Plus, now is the time to start rethinking DEI policies in light of the court’s affirmative action rulings and recently filed lawsuits. Then there’s the NLRB — another federal agency that’s been declaring many common handbook policies illegal and anti-union.

Missing or poorly worded policies can quickly lead to an expensive lawsuit. Your C-suite expects you to keep every word in your handbook up-to-date. Every HR department should use this simple checklist of the crucial changes you need to make to your employee handbook. Including policies on employee leave, DE&I, social media rules, and new federally mandated breaks and accommodations, this fast-paced training session will explain what should be revised in your handbook now.

Plus, discover the 12 most common legal mistakes lurking in employee handbooks this year and how to fix them.

You can’t afford to let your handbook go stale, especially as business policies, laws, and regulations are changing rapidly to operate in a post-pandemic world. Use this checklist webinar to make all the necessary handbook updates now.

Agenda for Employee Handbook Checklist

Essential updates. Up-to-the-minute HR changes to add to your handbooks now so you are ready for 2024.
Supreme Court-related changes. Learn why and how to change your handbook policies on abortion, religious expression, religious accommodations, and more in response to recent decisions.
Employee leave. What to include and what to leave out regarding FMLA, ADA, reasonable accommodation, and workers’ comp, including new rules for milk expression breaks and pregnancy accommodations. This may include adding time off for fertility treatments, childbirth recovery, postpartum depression, and even menopause.
Remote work and attendance. If workers have gone remote, you must update your policies to avoid liability. What should they say? What about hybrid schedules? Should you pay for routine supplies for teleworkers? What allowances must your handbook make for those requesting exclusively remote work for religious or disability reasons?
Diversity and inclusion. Failing to include this language can be a big red flag in bias lawsuits. But you must also comply with state rules limiting what your training can include. Plus, the Supreme Court decided a big case on affirmative action with implications for employers. Learn how that requires big handbook rule changes and a new approach to reaching diversity goals.
Accidental contracts. Identify wording that will tie your hands to future changes and give up your right to fire at will.
Dress and grooming. Learn how to set rules on appropriate behavior, attire, decor, and usage of Zoom, Slack, and Teams meetings, plus when hairstyle discrimination laws kick in.
Sexual and other harassment. Even if employees are remote, you need rules on email, telework, texting, and off-site meetings. Plus, mandatory bystander reporting rules may be necessary.
Speech and civility rules. When you can restrict what employees say and when you can’t (salaries, politics, hate speech, etc.).
Overtime. Why you need to include overtime rules in the handbook for managers and employees.
Handbook maintenance. When to review, how to update, and who should approve.
The “Dirty Dozen” mistakes. 12 handbook errors that will get you creamed in court and how to avoid them.

Interactive Q&A time included

Anniken will answer all of your handbook questions from what must go in and what is okay to leave out of the document.

Anniken Davenport is a noted employment law attorney and the editor of the HR Specialist: Employment Law newsletter series. She has authored several books, including Bullet-Proof Your Employee Handbook and Overtime & Other Tricky Pay Issues, published by HR Specialist. She is the co-author of the upcoming Labor & Employment Law for the 21st Century by Prentice Hall. Anniken has served as a professor at Penn State University, where she taught business law and HR management, and she directed the Legal Studies Program at Wilson College. Her legal career includes representing government units in discrimination and other employment law cases and representing school districts in labor negotiations.

Anniken Davenport Attorney and author

Professional Certification Credit Hours Included With This Webinar

Business Management Daily is recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDC) for SHRM-CP® or SHRM-SCP® recertification activities.

The use of this official seal confirms that this Activity has met HR Certification Institute’s® (HRCI®) criteria for recertification credit pre-approval.

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Employee Handbook Essentials

Whether you’re starting from scratch or simply updating your handbook, this white paper will walk you through a foolproof process and provide 20 customizable sample policies. The Employee Handbook Essentials white paper will provide the essentials you need to know, without bogging you down. Take the guesswork out of one of the most important documents for your organization.

4 free issues of The HR Weekly

You'll also receive one month of exclusive access to The HR Weekly – our comprehensive service with all the HR advice and compliance tools to simplify your job … and to keep your organization out of court. So that you continue to benefit from The HR Weekly, we will continue your subscription after that for the then current rate, unless you tell us "no, thanks" – your choice.

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