Starting at about 20 employees, it suddenly arises: questions, questions and more questions. "What should I do when I'm sick?" "How do I take my vacation days?" "How do I get my money back for something I advanced?" "What about overtime?" 

Until recently, you arranged sick calls via slack or whatsapp and just saw the sick person walking back into the office at some point. Noting vacation days ... that was such a hassle and on good faith it worked well too. Overtime didn't exist. You did your job and went home when it was done. Regularly you pulled an evening to get something done and then if you had to go to the physical therapist on Thursday morning, you just went.

But suddenly that's so different. The people you newly hire are going to ask questions. These people are important; they are going to help you structure and professionalize. They have been at other organizations where "all kinds of things" were regulated, and they are going to come and bring this knowledge to you, among other things. So you have to start establishing (secondary) terms of employment. How do you do this without cutting yourself in?

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(Secondary) benefits - don't over-commit yourself

In answering the questions, it is advisable to draw one line. What you commit to Sarah now, Jan may also want tomorrow. And is it possible? Does it make sense? Establishing the first simple things, is the march to your fringe benefits. 

And our advice is to keep this as simple as possible, too. As long as you can, you don't have to tie yourself down in all kinds of rules and agreements. So don't completely carpenter everything.

On the one hand, because you want to hold on as long as possible to the culture in which people feel freedom: one of the driving forces behind your organization's ability to innovate.

On the other hand, because you want to remain flexible: should it turn out in three years or so that you want to arrange some of the terms of employment differently after all, it is nice not to already be stuck with rules that you have already secured in a personnel manual.

We'd like to give you an idea of what you can include in an employee handbook.

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Wording

The most important thing in setting up fringe benefits in your employee handbook is the tone of voice. In the past, everyone copied the legal texts almost verbatim. Hardly anyone could explain them properly. Fortunately, we hardly see that anymore, although we still sometimes come across them.

How you word everything should fit your organization. For example, we are excited about Open.org's employee handbook. They have collected paragraphs from various companies that can be a good basis for a staff handbook. You can take inspiration from them as you search for the right descriptions and wording.

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Legal restrictions on writing fringe benefits

Finally, Dutch law specifies which arrangements or conditions must be determined by contract and what may be coordinated in other ways. We've put this into an easy-to-read checklist that you can use when working with the fringe benefits in your employee handbook. 

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Other questions? Don't hesitate and feel free to contact us!

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