HUMAN RESOURCE POLICY PROJECT ASSIGNMENT

Instructions

In a research
paper, provide researched rationale for the nature and substance of your 4
selected, distinct policies. This paper is to be reflective of an academic
research paper. The research paper must address the reasoning and/or rationale
for the inclusion of the selected policy elements in a policy manual.

The selected
policies must correctly address employment legislation pertinent to the stated
size of the company (15–25 employees). In elaborating on the rationale, you may
want to consider the following questions: Why should these elements be in a
policy manual? What laws or principles mandate an organization follow these
guidelines? What cases have established precedent for this issue to be
addressed clearly in an organization’s employee policy manual?

Support your
rationale with (at minimum) 10 reputable, practitioner sources (ex. SHRM) or
scholarly journals.  Government websites
(FLSA, EEO, etc.) can also count towards your sources (note some government
websites will not be a match – such as the dress code for the Wisconsin’s FDA
investigators.  The .gov isn’t
automatically an applicable source.   Be
discerning. These sources will likely be the same as the ones on the HRPP
Annotated Bibliography but pay attention to your instructor feedback if a
source or a policy topic needs to be changed for this work.  The 10 sources are in addition to the
required use of the textbook and the Bible.

The paper must be
at least 1,750 words, in addition to the cover page, the abstract, and the
references page. It must be written in current APA format. Papers submitted
with less than the minimum word count will not receive full credit in this area
of the grading rubric. 

Following are some
examples of HR policy topics. These are only examples. You may identify/select
other topics that would be relevant and appropriate for a general employee
policy manual/handbook.

·        
Dress
Code

·        
Technology
Use

·        
Fraternization
Policies (workplace dating)

·        
Confidentiality

·        
Harassment

·        
Benefits
(This can be more specific to areas such as paid time off, health care
benefits, and so forth.)

·        
Leave

·        
Moonlighting

·        
Attendance

Please DO NOT pick:

·        
Training

·        
Recruiting/Selection

·        
Code
of Conduct

·        
Ethics

·        
Performance
Reviews

Some of these are
more procedural and more for one person in a role at the company or for
supervisors.   Code of Conduct is easily
confused with the more common Code of Conduct in publicly traded organizations.

Keep the company
size in mind as you research.  Stay in
the US when it comes to laws and try to keep out of specific industries and
areas that are not a match.  For example,
an article on school dress code is not a good match to researching a dress code
at the workplace.  An article on
Transyvanian ceramic engineers who experience harassment is going to not have
good carryover to a small US coffee shop and the definition of harassment will
be not the same as the one in the US.  

This paper is a
rationale for the policies and the company is not important other than to keep
the small size in mind.   You can write
the paper in general terms (policies for a small company, etc.) or adopt a
fictional company (ex. ABC Coffee Shop).  
Do note this is not a research paper and you are not looking at specific
companies and what they have.   This is
also not the policies themselves and the tone will not be addressing employees
but rather a formal paper about the importance of the policies you pick.   Spend your time and effort on areas that
advance the paper and align with the assignment instructions and rubric.

The policies you
select do not need to be the most important four policies a company should have
– just any four policies that are of interest to you and a good match to a
small company handbook.

Your assignment
will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.