Справочник сотрудника: создание, содержание и правовые аспекты.

An employee handbook, sometimes also known as an employee manual, staff handbook, or company policy manual, is a book given to employees by an employer. The employee handbook can be used to bring together employment and job related information which employees need to know. It typically has three types of content:
Cultural: A welcome statement, the company's mission or purpose, company values, and more. General Information: holiday arrangements, company perks, policies not required by law, policy summaries, and more. Case Specific: company policies, rules, disciplinary and grievance procedures, and other information modeled after employment laws or regulations. The employee handbook, if one exists, is almost always a part of a company's onboarding or induction process for new staff. A written employee handbook gives clear advice to employees and creates a culture where issues are dealt with fairly and consistently.

In 2009, Netflix publicly released a presentation entitled Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility that described their movement away from a company culture based on command and control and towards one centered around freedom and responsibility. The presentation went viral and as of March 2018 had over 17 million views. Because the presentation also discusses other common company policies, it is often referred to as Netflix's employee handbook. It has been very influential, with many companies copying their "unlimited" vacation policy and their simple "Act in Netflix’s best interests" expenses policy. Alongside the Valve Handbook for New Employees and the Zappos Culture Book, the presentation has influenced many companies to create culture first employee handbooks that highlight their company culture instead of or before policies that would be found in a traditional employee handbook. Even the policies are rewritten in a much different way than tradition would dictate, or include informal summaries or introductions in plain language.

Federal and state laws and the growing number of cases of employee related litigation against management strongly suggests that a written statement of company policy is a business necessity for firms of any size. For example, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that in 2005, companies paid out more than $378 million in discrimination non litigated settlements. In 2014, the EEOC received a total of 88,778 discrimination charges filed against private businesses. Other examples of litigation against a company stemming from employee actions are the release of a customer's private information and, of course, the actions of one employee against another; sexual harassment being one type of offensive employee conduct. That said, some legal counsels recommend very small companies (less than 10 or 15 employees) to not have a handbook at all because most very small companies find it difficult to dedicate time or resources to maintaining an up to date employee handbook. It may be less risky for very small companies to not have documented policies at all rather than having misleading, out of date, or incomplete policies. However, others have maintained that there are benefits to small organizations, such as some NGOs, to maintain a quality policy manual for staff.