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Pottawattamie supervisors set process to pare employee handbook and assign policy committee review
Summary
After reviewing a draft 260‑page employee handbook, the board directed department heads to review changes for two weeks and tasked the policy (employee guidance and governance) committee with recommending what procedures should be pulled into department level policies; attorney counsel urged keeping legally required sections in the handbook.
County legal counsel and outside counsel reviewed a revised 260‑page employee handbook at the April 14 meeting and recommended narrowing the handbook to material that must apply uniformly while moving operational procedures to department policies and job descriptions.
Counsel emphasized that sections tied to legal obligations — including terms of employment, personal conduct and drug‑testing rules — should remain in the central handbook to provide consistent legal notice across the organization. Supervisors and staff discussed extracting procedural items such as travel expense and credit card rules into separate policies employees sign when applicable. Several supervisors proposed a targeted review plan: department heads receive the revised draft for two weeks of comment, then the policy committee will meet for a focused review and return recommendations to the full board, with the goal of completing the process by mid‑May.
Board members raised implementation concerns including enforceability, departmental variability in hours and overtime rules, and the need for supervisor training on complaint processes. Counsel recommended keeping core legal sections in the handbook (sections flagged in the packet) and letting department‑level policies handle operational procedures that vary by job. Supervisors discussed forming a small working group or committee to shepherd the edits and suggested using Microsoft Teams to collect comments and track changes.
The board did not approve the handbook at the meeting; it agreed on a schedule for review: two weeks for department comments, two weeks for the policy committee, and returning the revised handbook for board consideration on or about May 19.
