The small business employee handbook
Most handbook templates were written for a company with an HR department. If you have nine employees, half of what is in them does not apply to you and the other half assumes people and processes you do not have. The useful question is not "what goes in a handbook" — it is "what reaches me at my headcount, in my state".
The thresholds that actually matter
Federal employment law arrives in steps. Where you sit changes the document:
| At | What arrives |
|---|---|
| 1 employee | Wage and hour, overtime, timekeeping, safe workplace and injury reporting, military leave, nursing-break time, and the Section 7 rights that constrain how your policies may be written. |
| 5 employees | In California, harassment prevention training and CFRA leave. In New York, the paid sick-leave tier steps up. |
| 15 employees | Title VII, the ADA's reasonable-accommodation duty, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. |
| 20 employees | COBRA, if you offer a group health plan. |
| 50 employees | FMLA — 12 weeks of job-protected leave, with the eligibility rules that go with it. |
| 100 employees | In New York, paid sick leave rises to 56 hours. |
Note what this means below 15: several federal anti-discrimination statutes may not reach you, but state fair-employment laws often do — Pennsylvania's Human Relations Act reaches smaller employers than the federal statutes, and most states' sick-leave laws apply from the first employee. "Too small to worry about it" is usually wrong.
What a small employer's handbook should do
- Name a real person. With nine employees you do not have an HR department, so the complaint procedure has to name someone — and a second person for a complaint about the first. This is the single most important line in the document.
- Say what you actually do. If you do not offer paid vacation, do not include a vacation policy. A handbook describing benefits you do not provide creates expectations you will have to argue about later.
- State at-will employment, and mean it. "We will follow progressive discipline" is a promise; "we may skip steps depending on the seriousness" is a policy.
- Keep the protected-leave carve-out explicit. Small employers apply attendance rules informally, which is exactly how a protected absence ends up counted.
- Be short. Nobody at a nine-person company reads forty pages. The sample handbook here runs 19 pages for a two-state employer, and that is on the long side because California is in it.
What it costs, and what the alternatives cost
The alternatives are an attorney, a subscription HR platform that maintains a handbook for you, or a free template that costs nothing and knows nothing about your state. This is $149, once, for a handbook assembled from a cited policy bank for the states, industry and headcount you enter — with an honest list of what you still have to do yourself.
It is not a substitute for counsel, and we would rather say that plainly than sell you a feeling of safety. The policy bank is researched and cited but has not been reviewed by an attorney.
Informational, not legal advice. Thresholds and coverage rules change; check the sources cited in your compliance summary.