CAN I CHANGE MY COMPANY POLICIES?

The policies you implement for your businesses depend very much on the size and nature of your operation. However, there are some that you must have by law. These policies will need to conform to statutory requirements so you cannot change them in any way that would make you non-compliant.

But which policies are they?
You must have a Health and Safety policy if you employ more than five employees. You must also have a data protection document that covers the way that your business handles the data of its customers and how GDPR is being implemented. If you plan to change these at all, any changes must be in line with the laws within the UK.

There are many other policies that companies should have in place that will have certain statutory parameters such as:

Maternity/paternity leave
Anti-bribery
Equal opportunity
Disciplinary/grievance
Making changes
There are several codes of practice and legal acts that will govern how you write these policies. Again, any plans to make changes should be made with the codes of practice and legal acts in mind to ensure that they remain fair and compliant.

Other policies may be specific to your business and have been devised by you. For policies such as these, which are not based on legislation, changes can be made.

Accessibility
All your policies should be shared clearly with the staff in an employee handbook when they are hired and should be easily accessible. If you plan to change these it is vital to inform the staff of the changes and ensure that the updated version of the policy replaces all older versions and these are accessible by your staff.

It is important to consider whether the changes may impact staff in such a way that you leave yourself open to possible legal action. The best way to try and counter this happening is to involve the staff in the process of changing the policy.

Having a transparent process whereby you alert the staff to the proposed changes and allow them to feedback their responses, will allow any potential problems to be flagged up and avoided before the policy change is implemented.

Are you confident that your company policies are all in line with any legal requirements? If not we can help you to review and ensure you have an up to date set of policies and employee handbook for your business. Get in touch for a chat to see how we can support you.