Staff handbook compliance clause

Our clause places employees under an express contractual obligation to comply with your Staff Handbook.

Contractual or non-contractual

It’s your choice whether to make your Staff Handbook (or parts of it) contractual or not, but the main benefits of having non-contractual policies are: (1) you can amend or modify them without seeking employees’ consent (but you may still need to undertake some consultation with staff to avoid being in breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence); and (2) if you fail to adhere to the provisions of a policy, it won’t amount to a breach of contract on your part. Conversely though, if a policy has contractual force, your employee is bound by it and so it’s easier for you to take disciplinary action against them in the event of their breach. So, many Staff Handbooks are divided into two parts - one part being contractual (including those policies that contains rules and obligations for employees to follow) and the other part being non-contractual (incorporating all the other policies).

Non-contractual status

Where you’ve stated a policy to be non-contractual, it may still be possible though to increase its legal force. It will often be in your interests to place employees under a contractual duty to comply with a policy, even if the policy itself is expressed to be non-contractual, for example, if the policy gives some instructions to the employee about behavioural standards or how to perform their role, etc. We’ve therefore sought to achieve this by drafting our Staff Handbook Compliance Clause. This clause requires the employee to comply with all of the rules, policies and procedures set out in your Staff Handbook - and this would apply regardless of whether those rules, policies and procedures are contractual or not. Our Written Statement of Employment Particulars already optionally states that it should be read in conjunction with your Staff Handbook which, where indicated in the Handbook, forms part of the employee’s employment contract. Our new clause is an add-on to that as it provides an express contractual term requiring compliance with the whole of the Handbook, which also includes those sections that don’t form part of their employment contract.