Rules May Protect Your Business

One of the most persuasive reasons for having a set of solid work rules is that they can protect your business. Many employers have rules that protect them from liability — both legal and financial — and give them more freedom in managing and disciplining employees. Having certain work rules and policies in place may be the best way to protect your business from problems such as:

• wrongful discharge claims
• discrimination claims

If you have a very small number of employees, however, you may want to avoid having any work rules other than those required by law. Having no work rules about a given activity will give you more freedom to handle each situation on the basis of its own particular circumstances. If you have few employees, generally the circumstances of each situation will be sufficiently different that discriminatory treatment or wrongful discharge will not be an issue.

At any rate, if you have work rules you must enforce them consistently. The worst possible position to be in is to have rules, but not follow them yourself.