EANE’s HR consultants review, update, or write employee handbooks for employers across New England. We check every policy against federal law and the rules of each state where you have employees, then rewrite what needs rewriting in language your managers can use. Most of our handbook clients have 10 to 300 employees, and many have an HR team of one. Members save 30%.
Most projects start with a 20-minute call to scope the work. Contact us or call 877-662-6444 to set one up.
Three ways to work with us
Full handbook review and update. We review every policy, mark up the document with explanations, rewrite what needs rewriting, and add anything missing. Choose a full review if nobody has reviewed the handbook in the past year, you’ve grown past 50 employees, or you’ve added a state.
Selected policies. You know which sections worry you. We review and rewrite only those, for example leave and time off after a new state law, or discipline and termination after a difficult separation.
A new handbook. We interview you about how your company runs, draft a handbook that reflects those practices, and build in the state-specific policies you need.
What’s Included in Handbook Reviews
We read the whole handbook the way a state agency or a plaintiff’s attorney would, then the way a frontline supervisor would. A policy can be legally fine and still leave a supervisor guessing.
For every policy we check four things:
- Is it required? Each New England state requires certain policies in writing. The list changes or grows most years. Massachusetts alone expects written policies on sexual harassment, earned sick time, parental leave, and more.
- Is it current? Leave laws, sick time thresholds, and pay transparency rules changed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont recently.
- Does it match what you do? The most common problem we find is a handbook that states one thing while payroll, scheduling, or the managers do another. That gap is what gets employers in trouble.
- Can a manager use it? A handbook written as a list of rules doesn’t train anybody. We rewrite policies so a supervisor can find an answer and act on it.
State rules we check in every review
National templates and payroll-provider handbook builders often miss New England rules like these:
- Massachusetts. Earned sick time that follows the state’s accrual and use rules, Paid Family and Medical Leave notices, pay transparency language, and the written sexual harassment policy the state requires employers to distribute.
- Connecticut. Paid sick leave, where coverage depends on your headcount, and pay range rules for applicants and job postings. Handbooks also need to keep CT Paid Leave (wage replacement) and CT FMLA (job protection) straight. They are separate programs with different rules. Templates often blur them.
- Rhode Island. Paid sick and safe leave, plus the state’s pay range disclosure rules for applicants and current employees.
- Maine. Earned paid leave, plus the notices and leave policies that go with Maine Paid Family and Medical Leave.
- New Hampshire. The state doesn’t require sick leave, but if you offer it, your policy has to say what you offer. Wage payment and personnel file rules apply either way.
- Vermont. Earned sick time and pay ranges in job postings.
- Remote and multi-state employees. An employee who moved to a lake house in New Hampshire is a New Hampshire employee. We check the rules for the state each employee works in.
How a handbook review works
The whole project runs remotely with your HR lead or owner.
- Scoping call. Twenty minutes to understand your company, your states, and what prompted the review.
- Your handbook and a short questionnaire. You send the current handbook and tell us how you handle leave, scheduling, pay, discipline, and remote work.
- Review and markup. Your consultant reads every policy against federal law, each state’s rules, and your answers. You get the handbook back marked up policy by policy, with a short explanation for every change so you can defend it to your leadership team, plus a gap list ranked by risk.
- Walkthrough. We go through the markup together and talk through how to roll the changes out to managers and employees.
- Final documents. You receive the clean handbook with rewritten policies, an updated acknowledgment form, and notes for the rollout. Members can bring later rollout questions to the HR Hotline.
What an employee handbook review costs
We quote each project after the scoping call, because the work varies more than most buyers expect. Three things drive the price:
- Scope. A review of selected policies costs less than a full review, which costs less than a new handbook.
- States. Each state where you have employees adds policies to check and usually a state addendum to write.
- Drift. A handbook that’s been quietly ignored for five years takes more work than one that is a year out of date.
EANE members save 30% on handbook review and development, and membership adds the HR Hotline for questions between projects.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a handbook review take?
A full review of an existing handbook typically takes two to four weeks from the day we have your handbook and your questionnaire answers. Selected-policy reviews are faster. New handbooks take longer because we document your practices first.
Who reviews my handbook?
An EANE HR consultant who works with New England employers every day. When a policy raises a question that needs an employment attorney, we tell you rather than guess.
We have employees in more than one New England state. Do we need separate handbooks?
Usually one handbook with state-specific sections or addenda. We draft the core policies once and write an addendum for each state where you have employees, so a New Hampshire employee sees New Hampshire rules.
We built our handbook from a template, a payroll provider’s builder, or ChatGPT. Do we still need a review?
Yes, if it’s been more than a year or you’ve hired in a new state. Keep the document you have, since reviewing it costs less than writing a new one. A template can’t know that your Connecticut office crossed 11 employees in March, or that your managers handle attendance in a way the handbook never mentions. We wrote about AI-drafted handbooks in Can ChatGPT write your employee handbook? If you’d rather do the review yourself with guidance, the Employee Handbook Workshop walks you through it.
How often should we have the handbook reviewed?
Once a year is the right cadence for most New England employers, because at least one of the six states changes a leave or pay rule every year. Review sooner if you add a state, pass an employee-count threshold, or change how you handle pay, leave, or remote work.
Can you look at the rest of our HR practices while you’re at it?
Yes, through an HR compliance audit, which covers the handbook plus personnel files, wage and hour practices, I-9s, and postings. Many employers start with the handbook and move to the audit the following year.