There is a version of HR that answers every question with “you need a policy for that”. It produces a 90-page handbook that nobody reads, nobody follows, and that quietly becomes evidence against you when a dispute arises — because a policy you do not follow is worse than one you never wrote.
Here is a shorter list of the ones that genuinely earn their place in a small business.
The essentials
- Work health and safety. Not optional. It should cover hazard reporting, incident reporting, emergency procedures and who is responsible for what. Also cover psychosocial hazards — workload, bullying, exposure to conflict — which are a WHS duty, not just an HR nicety.
- Bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment. This is the one policy where having it, communicating it and enforcing it is directly relevant to your legal position. It sits under the positive duty, which requires proactive steps rather than a complaints process alone. State the standard, name the reporting paths — including one that is not the person’s direct manager — and commit to how complaints are handled.
- Complaints and grievances. A simple, written path for raising a concern. This is what stops a small problem becoming a Fair Work application.
- Leave. How to request it, how much notice, what evidence is required for personal leave, and how shutdowns work. Most day-to-day HR questions are leave questions.
- Code of conduct. Short. What the business expects around behaviour, confidentiality, conflicts of interest and use of company property.
- Privacy and data handling. You hold tax file numbers, bank details, medical certificates and family and domestic violence leave records. Say who can see them and how they are stored.
Worth having, depending on your business
- Working from home / flexible work, if any of your team do. Include the safety obligations, which do not stop at the office door.
- Social media and IT use, if your people represent the business publicly.
- Availability and out-of-hours contact, which does most of the work of complying with the right to disconnect.
- Drug and alcohol, in safety-sensitive work.
- Vehicle use, if staff drive for work.
What makes a policy actually work
Four things, and none of them are length.
- It is short enough to be read. One or two pages. If it needs to be longer, it is probably two policies or it is really a procedure.
- It was actually given to people, with a record of when. Policies introduced at induction and never mentioned again do not shape behaviour.
- It describes what the business really does. A policy that says complaints are investigated within five days, in a business that takes three weeks, is a liability. Write the standard you will meet.
- It says who is responsible. In a small business, name the role. “Management will ensure” means nobody will.
One structural point
Keep policies out of the employment contract. If a policy is incorporated into the contract, changing it may be a variation of contract requiring agreement, and breaching it may be a breach of contract. State clearly that policies are directions from the employer, may be varied from time to time, and are not contractual terms. This is a one-line distinction that saves a great deal of difficulty.
A working policy set for a small business is perhaps fifteen pages in total. Building it once, properly, is a far better investment than downloading a template pack and hoping the parts that do not fit never come up.