Spring is a good time of year to review business policies and procedures.
Every organization needs to make sure that it has up-to-date business policies in place that everyone is aware of and adheres to. These policies must be reviewed periodically to ensure that they remain up-to-date and compliant with best practices and legislation. Spring is a good time of year to review business policies and procedures and to make sure your staff is receiving adequate levels of training.
Depending on your business, you may have multiple policies in place for your employees, each of which should be reviewed at least annually to ensure you remain current with ever-changing laws. For our purposes, we will focus on three policies: sexual harassment, fleet safety, and social media. Each of these policies requires a strong attention to employee training. Flip page to view highlighted policies.
View all our training modules and their descriptions in our training catalogs.
Sexual harassment training is mandated in most states, and it is vital that your organization stays current with training for your employees. A sexual harassment policy should aim to protect men and women in your company from unwanted sexual advances and give them a formal procedure to report incidents. A strong sexual harassment policy can help your company meet its obligation to ensure a healthy and safe working environment. It can also impact the outcome of any sexual harassment cases in which your organization might become involved.
Your sexual harassment policy applies to every person in the company regardless of gender, sexual orientation, seniority or other protected character, and should include:
Sexual harassment training should be mandatory for all staff and provide them with an outline of the organization’s zero tolerance policy. Training of staff should occur at the beginning of employment and continue on a regular schedule afterward.
The goal of a fleet safety policy is to protect your drivers and organization as well as other drivers and pedestrians. Your organization’s safe driving policy should be tailored to reduce vehicle incident and at-fault work-related road collision costs and injuries by promoting a safe driving culture within the organization. A good fleet safety policy can help your organization receive fewer speeding violations, collisions, less property damage, fewer losses, lowered insurance rates, and fewer workers’ compensation claims.
Your company policy should also account for driver training needs and arranging appropriate training or refresher training, which should include:
You should review your company’s fleet safety policy with newly hired employees as well as all employees annually. Your policy should outline the organization’s driver rules, such as obeying traffic rules and reporting all damage to vehicles. The policy should also spell out what your drivers should do in case of an accident, and what the company is and is not responsible for.
Employers have realized the need to regulate the usage of social media by employees to minimize the possible release of confidential or proprietary information, violations of intellectual property rights, damaging and inappropriate comments from employees.
If your organization is on social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.) it needs a social media policy. A social media policy simply outlines how an organization and its employees should conduct themselves via the web. It helps protect your company’s online reputation and encourages employees to get involved in sharing about the company in their online networks. Having a social media policy for your business is essential in making sure your employees know what they should and should not do on social channels. Plus, it can help your company curb any legal or security issues.
At a minimum, your social media policy should include details about:
Your social media policy should also establish a training requirement. Employee training should focus on highlighting the requirements of your social media policy and general cyber safety awareness.
Social media is constantly evolving, and your organization’s social media policy should also be adaptable to change. More than any other policy, your social media policy is a living document that should be revisited every year and updated accordingly.
Christian Brothers Risk Management Services offers convenient, one-stop assistance for employer training programs. We can assist your organization with the utilization of our learning management system to help meet your sexual harassment and safe driver training needs. Visit cbservices.org to see our Online Training Catalog and our full lineup of live virtual risk management training for members of our Risk Pooling Trust.
