Last month one of our team members, Mary Lake, wrote a blog about unlimited vacation and employees taking extended holidays. Interestingly, after its posting, a colleague of mine called to share an issue around his extended vacation.

My colleague had planned a two-and-a-half-week vacation at the end of the year. This allowed him to minimize the impact to clients and his teams due to the slower period of the year. He had accrued over 110 hours of PTO and was going to utilize 88 hours on his holiday.

When he returned from vacation and received his PTO balance from him employer, he discovered that instead of having 20 hours of PTO remaining, he was in fact 27 hours in the hole. Approaching his employer, he discovered that the company’s policy was only to allow employees to carry over 40 hours of PTO annually. Looking through his employee handbook, he found that this “policy” wasn’t actually recorded in the employee handbook.

My colleague’s call couldn’t have come at a better time. We are in the middle of reviewing two client employee policy and procedure handbooks and this topic has been on the forefront of my mind. Ambiguity in organizational policy and procedures is extremely common among small to mid-size businesses. Importantly, it’s one of the most critical things in an organization’s HR toolkit that should be crystal clear.

Thinking through what to include in an employee handbook can alleviate the possibility of a whole host of employee and/or legal issues for your organization. It is important to create a culture of trust among your staff and you want to take great care that your policies aren’t subjective and counterproductive. Not thinking through your policies can cause greater liability on behalf of the organization to outside legal challenges, and perhaps more importantly, it reflects a lack of thoroughness and thoughtfulness on the part of the organization.

The first quarter is the perfect time to pull out the employee handbook and review and update. Many policies may have changed or need to be changed. New policies need to be created, whether it is because of compliance issues, or dynamics in the workplace.

As organizational leaders and HR professionals, it’s our responsibility to take the time educate our staff on what the organization’s policies and practices are and ensure that employees clearly understand expectations. Being clear, concise and transparent can have such a long-term positive impact on the business.