When Your Company Needs an Employee Handbook

If you have an employee, you need employment policies.

In fact, many states have laws and labor codes that affect companies with just one employee. For example, “wage orders” (hours of work, overtime, physical working conditions, and wages) apply to companies with just one employee. This is also true of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
Your employment liabilities start when you hire your first employee, but that alone doesn’t justify a manual. Let’s look at what you need to do, depending on how many employees you have.
One employee:
Write out your policies in memo form on company letterhead, including at-will employment, hours of work and attendance, holidays, vacations, sick leave (if any), payroll deductions, paydays, and a job description.
Five employees:
At this point, the Fair Employment and Housing or EEO laws begin to apply to your company, including, in some states, maternity leave laws. When your company has a policy regarding maternity leave, it must also have policies regarding other types of leave as well.
Fifteen employees:
An employee handbook is a must: federal Civil Rights, Americans with Disabilities, and Pregnancy Leave Acts all apply to companies with 15 or more employees.