HR policies: examples of what a small company actually needs

Search for HR policies and the examples you find are written for organisations with a compliance function and several hundred staff. A company of fifteen people needs a far shorter list, and needs each policy to be a page rather than nine — because a policy nobody has read has no effect except in a dispute, where it will be read very carefully indeed.

This is a starting set for a small company, with a note on what each one is actually for. It is not legal advice, and the required content of several of these is set by employment law where you operate rather than by convention.

HR policies most small companies need

• Holiday and leave: entitlement, how to request it, how much notice, how carry-over works, what happens to unused days.
• Sickness: who to tell and by when, when a certificate is needed, what is paid.
• Parental and family leave: usually largely determined by statute, but people need to know where to look and who to ask.
• Working hours and flexibility: core hours if any, overtime treatment, whether hours are recorded.
• Remote and hybrid work: where people may work, what equipment is provided, expectations about availability.
• Expenses: what can be claimed, limits, evidence required, when it is paid.
• Code of conduct: how people treat each other and what happens when they do not.
• Grievance and disciplinary: the steps, in order, with who hears what. Often legally prescribed.
• Data protection and confidentiality: what staff may do with customer data and company information.
• Equipment and acceptable use: company devices, personal use, security expectations, return on leaving.

Grievance and disciplinary procedures are the ones to get right first, and the ones where local law most often dictates the steps. They are also the only policies certain to be examined by someone hostile. Everything else can be improved gradually; these two should be correct from day one, and checked against the rules in your jurisdiction rather than copied.

What separates a policy people follow

A usable policy answers three questions in its first paragraph: who does this apply to, what do I have to do, and who do I ask. Most published examples answer none of them until page three, after a statement of commitment that exists to be quoted and does nothing else.

Length is not a proxy for rigour. A one-page expenses policy that states the limits, the evidence required and the payment date prevents more disputes than a six-page version that qualifies every sentence. The long version tends to be long because it was written to cover the author rather than to inform the reader.

Writing the set

1. Start with the questions people actually ask you repeatedly — those are the policies you already need.
2. Write each one to a page, in plain language, addressing the employee directly.
3. Check anything statutory against local employment rules, or with an adviser, before it goes out.
4. Name an owner and a review date on each document.
5. Publish them all in one place people can reach without asking.
6. Get confirmation that new starters have read the ones that matter, as part of onboarding.
7. Review after any incident that the policy handled badly, rather than only on the annual cycle.

Handbook or separate documents

Both work. A handbook reads better for new starters and is easier to hand over as one thing; separate policies are easier to update without reissuing everything and easier to point at in a specific conversation. The practical compromise most small companies land on is separate documents plus a short handbook that introduces them and links out.

What matters more than the shape is version control. Two versions of the sickness policy circulating, one in an old handbook and one in a shared folder, is worse than having neither, because both sides of a disagreement can produce a document supporting them.

Writing the document is the easier half. Policy compliance software distributes each version to the people it binds and records who accepted it and when, which is the evidence an investigation asks for years later.

One scheme is worth writing down precisely because money changes hands. An employee referral policy has to state when the bonus is paid, who is excluded from it, and that referred candidates face the same criteria as everybody else.

Keeping them current

Ettex Docs is the practical home for this: each policy as a document with the version history kept, comments for review before publication, and sharing so there is one address for the current version rather than copies in three inboxes. Duplicating an existing policy as the starting point for the next one is faster than beginning from a blank page.

It does not contain a policy library, and there is no jurisdiction-specific template to fill in. That is deliberate: employment law differs by country and often changes, and a generic policy that looks authoritative is worse than none, because it gets relied on. Draft against your own rules, and have anything with legal consequence reviewed by someone qualified in your jurisdiction.

Write the policies people already ask you about, keep each to a page, get the grievance and disciplinary ones checked properly, and make sure only one version of each is in circulation.