Hands up if you’ve read all your firm’s policy and procedures manual(s)!
It’s a given that many employees find these publications either too long or too boring, or both, so the chances are that there are many who are not up to speed with these important documents.
Enter Sunshine Coast lawyer Paul Brennan, who launched Employee Legal Awareness Day back in 2007 and since then has written articles such as ‘Ten Legal Things that your Employees Need to Know’ and devised a three-minute ‘Are you legally savvy’ quiz to promote the advantages of keeping employees legally savvy.
Besides encouraging employees to take an interest in the legal issues that impact their company, the Employee Legal Awareness Day also encourages companies to keep their policy and procedures manuals at realistic levels – at least no longer than the 2021 length, or even actively seek to reduce the length and complexity of the documents.
Paul Brennan
“There is a certain satisfaction in drafting a considered policy document and keeping it up to date,” Paul said. “But if employees do not read it until a problem arises, then they may not be aware of the avoidable legal pitfalls that can cause significant loss to their employer before it is too late.
“In the last decade, policy documents appear to have substantially increased in length while remaining unappealing to any normal employee.”
Employee Legal Awareness Day, which is held on 13 February each year (this Saturday), has grown in popularity and is now widely observed, as a Google search will confirm, or follow the Twitter hashtag #EmployeeLegalAwarenessDay.
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