The Importance of a Legally Sound Employee Handbook

Employee handbooks, sometimes called employee manuals or employee policies, often represent the Achilles’ heel of church legal compliance.

Employee lawsuits frequently appear near the top of all types of lawsuits against churches. Employee handbooks may assist in avoiding these lawsuits, but this critical documentation is often neglected or copied from secular sources that neglect the unique nature of churches and other religious organizations.

In the employment arena, an employee handbook (handbook) plays the same role in employee relations as the Bible does to a Christian’s everyday life.

Just as the Bible includes rules for relationships and how we should conduct our lives, a handbook includes the rules, policies, and procedures governing and establishing expectations for the relationship between the church and its employees.

A carefully created handbook should include the church’s ...