Employee Handbook Template

This free employee handbook template gives a US small business a short, plain-English handbook in Word and PDF. It’s built for owners and office managers with no HR department, at businesses with 1 to 50 employees. It covers the policies most small businesses need, with a highlighted [placeholder] for every detail you fill in: your company name, hours, pay days, time off and contacts.

What you get

A ten-page PDF, sized for US Letter paper, and an editable Word file:

• Pages 1–8: the handbook, in 29 short sections, from the welcome and at-will statement to leaving the company.
• Page 9: an acknowledgment page for each employee to sign, with space for questions.
• Page 10: notes on state addenda, legal review and rolling it out, with links to the sources.

There’s no filled-in example this time: the handbook itself is the template. Every placeholder is tinted so you can’t miss one, and the Word file lets you delete the policies you don’t need.

What a good employee handbook includes

• A clear “not a contract” statement. Say plainly that the handbook isn’t a promise of employment for any length of time and that you can change it.
• Equal opportunity and anti-harassment policies that work. Give employees more than one person to report to, so nobody has to complain to the person harassing them, and promise no retaliation.
• Timekeeping rules for hourly staff. Non-exempt employees must record all the time they work. Federal rules say that if you let someone work, the time counts, even if you didn’t ask for it (29 CFR 785.11). So the handbook bans off-the-clock work rather than just discouraging it.
• Pay and overtime basics. When payday is, what you deduct, and overtime at one and one-half times the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek (29 CFR 778.107).
• Time off and leave. Your PTO and holidays, your state’s paid sick leave rules, and the leave the law requires.
• Conduct and discipline. Examples of what’s not allowed, and the usual steps, without promising you’ll always follow them in order.
• An acknowledgment page. A signed record that each employee received the handbook.

How to write an employee handbook for a small business

1. Start with how you actually run the business. Write down your hours, pay schedule, time-off rules and who employees should go to with problems.
2. Fill in every placeholder in the template, then delete anything you don’t do. A written promise you don’t keep is worse than no policy.
3. Check whether federal laws apply at your size. Title VII and the ADA apply from 15 employees and age discrimination law from 20 (EEOC), and the FMLA from 50 (US Department of Labor). Many state laws apply to smaller employers.
4. Add an addendum for each state where you have employees.
5. Have an employment lawyer in your state review it.
6. Hand it out, explain it at a short meeting, and collect signed acknowledgments. For new hires, add it to your new hire checklist. Review it every year.

Free employee handbook template for small business

Big-company handbooks run to 50 pages and cover benefits plans, unions and global offices. This one is concise on purpose. Each policy is a few short paragraphs, written the way you’d explain it to a new hire, so people actually read it. It still covers what matters most when something goes wrong: how to report harassment, how time is recorded, how discipline works, and that employment is at will.

If you’re hiring for the first time, use it alongside the offer letter template, which repeats the at-will statement and the key terms. When a policy is broken, the employee write-up form lets you quote the handbook section that was missed.

California, New York and other state addenda

The handbook is written for federal law. Some states require more, and a few states’ rules change how you write the core policies. For example:

• California requires a written harassment, discrimination and retaliation prevention policy with a complaint process that doesn’t force employees to go through their own supervisor (2 CCR 11023). It also requires overtime after eight hours in a workday (Labor Code 510), and its family leave law covers employers with five or more employees (Gov. Code 12945.2).
• New York requires every employer to adopt a sexual harassment prevention policy that meets the state’s model policy and give it to employees in writing (Labor Law 201-g).
• Montana is not an at-will state in the usual sense. After a probationary period, an employer needs good cause to dismiss an employee (Montana Code 39-2-904). Replace the at-will section with wording from a Montana lawyer.

Paid sick leave, final pay, vacation payout, meal and rest breaks, and voting and jury leave also vary by state. That’s why the template uses placeholders such as [your state’s paid sick leave rules] instead of numbers.

Policies to word carefully

Most non-supervisory employees, in a union or not, have the right to talk about their pay and working conditions with coworkers and others, and to contact a government agency (NLRB). You can’t discipline or threaten anyone for this, so a confidentiality or social media rule that bans “discussing wages” or “negative comments about the company” only creates risk. The template’s versions say plainly that they don’t limit those rights. Keep that wording if you edit them.

When to get advice

Have a lawyer review the handbook before you hand it out, and again if you open in a new state, reach 15 or 50 employees, or plan drug testing. Get advice before relying on the handbook to discipline or dismiss someone who has recently complained, asked for an accommodation or taken leave.

Want a quick answer on what your state requires before you finish your handbook? That’s what hrsupport.io is for: HR answers for your state, with the law behind every answer.