Norman J. Hetland and Howard R. Rosenberg
Many farm employers have found written personnel policies helpful to guide decisions and clarify what workers and managers can expect of one another. Policies can save much administrative time and help reduce the incidence of supervisory decisions that violate a public law or a private sense of fairness. Not all farmers who appreciate the potential of communicating policies through employee handbooks, however, have the time to develop one.
For several years reference books and consulting services have provided example policies that could be used verbatim or modified for individual firms. Computer software packages now offer similar aid, plus the facility to print policies in handbook form bearing the company name. Most of these programs, while allowing the user to edit standard wording, give little or no basis for weighing the appropriateness of a given policy in different contexts. A notable exception, by KnowledgePoint, Petaluma, CA, is Personnel Policy Expert, which won a 1989 Excellence in Software Award from the Software Publishers Association.
Personnel Policy Expert (PPE) is advertised as an "expert system," providing on-screen information about policy topics (including applicable laws) and posing diagnostic questions about management preferences and company circumstances. User responses to these questions are automatically factored into draft policies that can be edited and printed as a customized handbook. Of 14 computerized policy generators that we were able to identify in a recent search, only PPE, priced at $495 (semi-annual updates cost $95 per year) claims this form of user-friendliness. Most of the others, producing rather generic policies without education or diagnostics, retail for $40 to $170.
The complete set of PPE files occupies about 2.5 megabytes of disk space. Operation requires an IBM-compatible computer with 512K RAM plus two floppy drives or a hard disk, the latter making both installation and operation much easier. Installation onto a hard disk is simple, takes just a few minutes, and proceeds exactly as outlined in initial sections of the User Manual. While the manual is attractive and clear, on-screen instructions are sufficient to guide the user after installation.
Drafting a policy with PPE is as straightforward as booting up the program, choosing one of the 65 topics from the Policy Selection menu, reading the introductory statement on that subject, and answering questions (two to four on most topics; range is zero to twelve) that may then appear on screen. In seconds, the screen displays a draft policy that can then be saved as either final or provisional, subject to editing and approval. Reviewers can record comments that will be stored in the file - but not printed - with each draft policy. Policy statements can be edited through a basic utility provided within PPE or exported for editing in a full-feature word processing system. Any combination of policies, at provisional or final stage, can be printed as a paged manual (again, through either PPE or a more sophisticated word processor) ready for reproduction.
Policy Content
The 65 handbook topics in PPE are generally pertinent to firms in various industries. They are organized into nine groups:
Introduction: Title Page; Welcome; Organization Description; Introductory Statement; Employee Acknowledgment;
Employment: Nature of; Employee Relations; EEO; Relatives; Physical Exams; Immigration Law; Conflicts of Interest; Outside Employment; Nondisclosure (of proprietary information);
Employment Status and Records: Employment Categories; File Access; Reference Checks; Record Updates; Probationary Period; Applications; Performance Evaluation;
Employee Benefits: General; Vacation; Child Care; Holidays; Workers' Compensation; Sick Leave; Voting Time; Bereavement; Relocation; Jury Duty; Witness Duty; Benefits Continuation (COBRA);
Timekeeping/Payroll: Timekeeping; Paydays; Termination; Severance Pay; Pay Advances; Pay Corrections; Deductions and Setoffs;
Work Conditions and Hours: Safety; Work Schedules; Phone and Mail; Smoking; Rest and Meals; Overtime; Equipment and Vehicle Use; Emergency Closings;
Leaves of Absence: Medical; Family; Personal; Educational; Military; Maternity;
Employee Conduct and Discipline: Conduct and Work Rules; Drugs and Alcohol; Sexual and Other Harassment; Attendance and Punctuality; Personal Appearance; Return of Property; Resignation; Security Inspections; Solicitation; Drug Testing;
Miscellaneous: AIDS.
Thirty-one of the topics (e.g., Employment Categories, Termination) are identified as "Primary," i.e., most commonly found in employee handbooks. Thirteen, including 11 from the Primary list, are further noted as "Legally Important" for inclusion in handbooks.
The policy areas covered by PPE are not equally pertinent or suitable to agricultural firms. Inappropriate topics can simply be neglected by growers, however, and others adapted or augmented to fit. Topics on which PPE offers a nice set of options generally applicable to farm management include: employment categories; probationary periods; performance evaluation; work schedules; overtime; leaves of absence (all kinds); employee conduct and work rules; attendance and punctuality; and employee relations.
Standard policies on some topics covered could be elaborated to better suit farm situations. For example, agricultural employers may want to substantially edit PPE policies on safety, time keeping, and verification of employment eligibility (under "immigration law").
Among policies likely to be less important in agricultural operations are those on nondisclosure, use of phone and mail systems, educational leaves, and personal appearance. Topics on which PPE has no policy, but for which farmers may want one, include seasonal layoff and recall, wet-time and standby pay, determination of piece rates, and company housing. The program allows for insertion of such policies created by the user.
Company policies on some PPE topics, though rare or inconceivable just 10 years ago, are of growing significance today: smoking in the workplace; maternity-related absences (including those to prevent exposure to toxic substances); solicitation; drug testing; and AIDS.
All draft policies and informational screens in PPE have been reviewed and edited for legal implications by Richard J. Simmons, well-known attorney specializing in employment law. Most policy statements are less than a page long, though they range up to three or four. Perhaps because of the care taken to ensure compatibility with laws, several statements strike us as rather "corporate" or bureaucratic. Legal reasons for having such voice may be offset by human reasons for moderating it. One wonders how some of the language would go over with, say, a peach picker or a D-6 chisel operator.
Operational Features
While the intricacy of policy and advice text varies across subjects, the process of creating a policy draft is quite standard. Informational screens on most topics offer function-key access to additional comments about specific policy issues. Cross-reference screens help maintain consistency among related policies. After viewing drafts that result from different sets of answers to the diagnostic questions, one can compare, sift, select, and combine policy alternatives.
For about 10 of the topics, a single screen summarizes all of the questions to be asked. Though this feature is obviously most useful for topics with more complexity and policy variation, it would be nice to have for initial overview of every topic. Below are summaries of how PPE treats two representative subjects.
n Sick Leave: After generally introducing issues for employers to consider in deciding whether and in what form to provide a sick leave benefit, PPE asks 10 questions, some with two parts. A more specific information screen appears before each question. The user is prompted for choices about which categories of employee are eligible; how long a new hire has to wait before using leave credits; at what rate the leave accrues, and whether any adjustment is made for shift differentials and alternative work schedules; how short a period of leave is allowed; what maximum number of days can be accrued; whether a physician's release is required to return to work after a given number of sick days; and how use of sick leave is tied to workers' compensation and disability benefits. Cross-references to other benefits policies and to dependent sick leave are offered, as is a help screen for calculating sick leave for flextime employees. The program then generates a policy running about a page and a half.
n Conduct and Work Rules: PPE opens the topic with reasoned advice that it may be better not to specify too much. It then asks the user to select all applicable forms of prohibited conduct from a list of 18 types. Examples are theft, falsification of records, use of alcohol and drugs, fighting, insubordination, safety or health violations, sexual harassment, absenteeism, and unsatisfactory performance. A cross-reference information screen and question prompt the user to indicate the company stance on employment "at-will." Depending on the responses, the draft policy may range from three paragraphs to two pages.
Though PPE's help screens and policy drafts are conditioned on user responses to diagnostic questions, PPE's internal decision trees and output alternatives are not as intricate as those of most sophisticated "expert systems." All questions are topic-specific. One could imagine a souped-up version with, in addition, a few introductory questions on such characteristics as legal form of the business, nature of product line, number of employees, turnover rate, and employee literacy level, the answers to which would globally affect policy tone and content. Unless and until such a feature is added, PPE's crude editing facility should get plenty of use.
Other, simpler refinements would be useful. For example, no helpful beep warns the user when an obviously out-of-range response to a question (e.g., 10,000 years) is entered. Some sets of alternative answers contain overlapping categories (e.g., "probationary employees" and "all employees") that could be presented to show their logical relationships or recast into mutually exclusive choices. And some questions calling for verbal answers cannot cope with more than one word or labels longer than eleven characters. None of these problems is fatal, of course. Any flawed policy drafts that result can be edited later, though correction is tedious where a single answer affects several passages.
The Bottom Line
Is Personnel Policy Expert worth acquiring? Merely as a fancy checklist of policy components to consider, it encourages managers to think ahead and inform workers about terms of employment. If it thus enables people on a ranch to work together more effectively, or helps avoid turnover, lawsuit, or costly effects of demoralization, PPE pays back more than its purchase price. Some of the cheaper programs and even printed references, however, could serve the checklist function just as well at much lower cost.
But PPE and other policy software packages are more than checklists. They are tools for thoughtfully developing and producing a document that can communicate to employees and third parties the organizational culture as well as specific expectations of people at work. Just because the costs of operating without such a document are hidden does not mean they are small. If any tool can spell the difference between having and not having an articulate employee handbook on key personnel issues, it is easily worth $495 and more.
PPE does not come cheap, but its ease of use makes it possible for many farmers who "haven't had the time" to finally create their first handbooks, largely because it reduces to a few hours the time needed. Taking advantage of its customizing features and updates, users can inject agricultural terms into generic language and then keep their policies current with changes in company preference and the law.
We have both been charged with writing personnel policy manuals for previous employers. One of us, in the crush of fire-fighting, barely got beyond drafting a few essential policies in either of two companies. The other managed, in about three weeks, to crank out a handbook with several ill-advised statements and a couple of regrettable omissions. With Personnel Policy Expert, we could have done each drafting job quite well in a day at most, and then rapidly and painlessly integrated the numerous changes imposed by upper-level managers. PPE is direct and unstressful - the kind of burden reliever that computer programs are supposed to be.
Now if the program just had a search-and-replace feature, so that all occurrences of an unwanted term at the policy creation level could be altered at once. And if KnowledgePoint would break down and write a Macintosh version for us zealots who know what "user friendly" really means.
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