Set up employment policies for your business

Training and performance management

Having a training policy in place will enable you to plug any skills shortages in your workplace. This is beneficial not only to employees personally and professionally but will also have a positive knock-on-effect to business performance. A training policy can be implemented to allow employees to perform their current role more effectively or support them through a change in role.

You should ensure that your training policy is appropriate. This can be achieved through assessing whether it fits with your business plan and through discussions with employees, eg you may decide to offer training in-house for specific tasks, general company guidance for new starters or refresher training for existing employees.

See our guide on how to turn underperformance into high performance.

Implementing an appraisal system is another way of improving your business performance. It represents a good opportunity to discuss with individual employees their strengths and weaknesses and agree new aims and objectives with them. Businesses commonly carry out appraisals within a few months of a new employee starting or changing role within the business. For established employees, you may decide to use the appraisal system once or twice per year.

Some of the benefits of having appraisal-related performance targets are that employees understand what is expected of them and how these fit into the wider aims of the business. Targets are also a way of gaining useful feedback and ideas on how your business can be more effective in the future. See our guide on how to use appraisals to manage performance.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• What types of policies should I set up?
• Working time policies
• Patents and copyright
• Health and safety policies
• Disciplinary and conduct policies - harassment, bullying and disputes
• Company policies and facilities
• Training and performance management
• Pay, rewards and benefits
• Writing staff policies

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