I feel a little strange doing a post that is supposed to help church leaders organize and write a Staff Policy Manual. Why? It took me 7 years to write one for my church!
Regardless, what I came up with served our church very well, and I wanted to share it. So, how do you write a Staff Policy Manual?
The first order of business is to put a good outline together. What should your manual include? There are several things to consider. The manual has to do a couple of things for you. Most importantly, the manual should communicate important policies and business practices to your staff. Second, the manual has to serve as a document that proves compliance with local, state, and federal employment laws.
Probably the most helpful thing to have is a good example. In our case, we consulted with a couple of human resources leaders in our church to help us put our outline together. There are many “templates” out there that you may purchase or, in some cases, download for free.
The next step is to write each section of the manual. This proved to be the most difficult part. Why? Everything we could find that was already written, supposedly ready to go for any church, wasn’t written very well. They were certainly written in language that would be consistent with our church.
So, we wrote our own manual. I’m hopeful that it is written in such a way as to allow you to use it for your church. You can download the PDF via the link below.
Of course, the manual is always available to you (along with lots of other forms, procedures, and policies) in the Resources area of this website. Contact me if you are interested in getting a Word version of the manual, allowing you to edit it for your church.