Human Resource Solutions

Free Employee Policy Templates for Small Businesses

We passionately believe in supporting SMEs and all our website resources are free

Updated for 2024

Ask a Question

If you have a burning question about any staffing issue whatsoever, just click the above link. This will allow you to submit a question to one of our HR Consultants who will give you an answer in 24 - 48 hours

Free of Charge

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If you are looking to improve your business skills, you need to gain an accredited certificate, or undertake training for you or your staff, consider High Speed Training. They offer a large range of ONLINE courses and there is no easier way to learn from £20.

All the courses are e-learning based so can be completed at your own computer. This is the only e-learning provider that we recommend.

Who is Alex. Brogan?

Alex. Brogan is a highly regarded HR professional with over 30 years experience working with large and small businesses helping them to manage their staffing problems.

His website and blog are extremely popular online resources for small businesses offering advice, guidance and many other resources and tools all for free.

He has an MBA and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Book Recommendations

Our brand new ebook on "How to Deal With Staff Who Can't or Won't Perform" by Alex Brogan has now been published and is available for download.

Complete with an online resource pack and access to an email helpdesk,it outlines how to deal with everything from staff incompetence and sickness absence to cases of gross misconduct.

There is a small charge for this (£4.99) which will support keeping our other resources free.

Getting started with HR Solutions..

Welcome!

Hello my name is Alex. Brogan. If you run a small or medium sized business and need any advice about employing or managing staff, then this website is for you.

Our aim is simple: to provide the best possible advice and resources to support your business at no cost to you.
(We cover the costs of the website by onsite adverts, some affiliate income and a few book sales).

We realise how overwhelming it can appear when you are faced with having to employ your first or a new member of staff, or having to deal with complex issues like parental leave or staff continually off sick. Don't worry this page is designed to make sure you get the information you need by linking you to the best resources on our website. So lets get started....

What would you like to do?

Ensure your business is ready to employ staff

In reality small businesses do not need to have much in the way of policies and procedures in place to start employing staff. You do need a Health & Safety Policy, but if you have 5 or less staff you don't even have to write this down (although we would recommend you do). Look on our Health and Safety Page (see left-side menu) for more advice on this, or there is a simple template here. You can gradually implement other key policies or a simple staff handbook as your business and employee numbers grow. For further information on the legal requirements around employment policies have a look at this blog post.

Employ your first (or next) member of staff

This can be a daunting prospect! It is very straightforward though - we have a comprehensive guide on "How to employ your first member of staff" which takes you through the process from doing a job description, advertising the job, preparing the administration and welcoming them onboard.

If you want advice on issuing a contract of employment, look at our video tutorial on that subject on our Video Tutorials page.

You already employ some staff but you're worried that you don't have proper employment policies and procedures in place yet.

The best advice in these circumstances is to ensure you do 2 things:
1. Make sure all your staff have a proper statement of their terms and conditions of employment (a.k.a an employment contract). There are several templates on our Contract of Employment page that you could use.
2. Implement a simple Staff Handbook which describes your company policy on any other employment issues e.g. how to report sick. There is a complete up-to-date staff handbook template on our Staff Handbook page. We also have an integrated contract / staff handbook template there.

If you already have some policies in place and just want to add some other policies as they are required e.g. a parental leave policy, then you can use the free template policies available on our site - see left-side menu.

You want to ensure your policies are always up-to-date

If you use the templates on our website, then we always update them where there are changes to employment law or best practice. You can ensure you are kept informed of any changes by signing up to our free update service where we will email you if any policy / handbook is amended. Sign Up Here.

You can also regularly check our blog where we will make you aware of any upcoming employment issues which might affect your business.

You want advice and support in dealing with your staffing issues

You can submit a question to one of our consultants, and we will email you back in 24 - 48 hours with an answer. You can follow this up as often as you like - all free of charge.

We also have many articles and answers to questions submitted to us on our blog which deals with a wide range of staffing issues and problems. On the right side of this page we have listed out a number of our most popular articles.

We also have an ebook available in response to some of the most asked questions on our website: "How to Deal With Staff Who Can't or Won't Perform" by Alex Brogan. This comes complete with a free comprehensive online resource pack and currently costs £4.99 - all proceeds go to maintaining this site as a free resource.