HR Compliance

Employee Rights Kit

Both you and your employees have reason to make sure employee rights are protected in your workplace. An employee rights kit can be a powerful tool for maintaining a fair and equitable work environment.

Employees have rights and everyone in your workplace knows exactly what they are, right?

Probably not. Employees and supervisors often have mistaken beliefs about what your employees' rights are and their proper application in the workplace.

The stakes couldn't be higher. A single violation of employment law can land your company in legal hot water and have a ripple effect throughout your organization. That means it's absolutely imperative to educate your workers and leadership team about labor law and employee workplace rights.

A comprehensive employee rights kit can kickstart your education efforts. By equipping every employee and manager with this kit, you can nip problems in the bud and prevent most employee rights infractions from happening at all. We suggest you use your employee rights kit as the basis for periodic, company-wide training sessions to further inoculate your workplace from unfair or discriminatory practices. Here's what your kit should contain.

Workplace Policies

Your company's workplace employment policies need to be prominently featured in your employee rights kit. Hopefully these policies have already been communicated to your employees and given adequate attention in the Employee Handbook. By including them in the employee rights kit, you create opportunities to reinforce them with your managers and employees, and to provide your organization with an accessible resource on a go-forward basis. Some of the items to include in your kit are your Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) statement, sexual harassment policy, drug and alcohol policy, disciplinary policy, termination policy and other critical policy statements.

Complaint Process

A good employee rights kit includes a description of your company's complaint and grievance procedures. If you don't currently have a formal grievance process, get on it ASAP. Airtight employment policies that lack an appropriate grievance process can be legally problematic, especially when an employee believes they have been exposed to a hostile work environment.

Penalties & Consequences

In the business world, policy and rights violations have consequences. It's one thing to claim that your business won't tolerate discriminatory or hostile workplace activities. But by describing the consequences for non-compliance in the employee rights kit, you draw a line in the sand and put real weight behind your commitment to your workforce.