The 3 Reasons Why Your Brewery Should Have an Employee Handbook

Founded and owned by Szymankiewicz, the North Carolina-based Beer Law Center is a boutique law firm focused on alcohol law. A former engineer and project manager, Szymankiewicz spent decades home brewing. He ran out of steam engineering and pursued law school to focus on his true passions.

“I come to the law as Career 2.0,” Szymankiewicz says. “I enjoy drinking and making beer and love the industry.”

Szymankiewicz founded Beer Law Center shortly after earning his law degree from NC Central University Turner School of Law in 2010. Since launching the firm, he has made it his mission to help breweries understand the legal issues around making alcohol—an unusual segment of the law industry with just a few dozen such practitioners in the country, according to Szymankiewicz.

“We saw there wasn’t anyone dedicated to the craft beverage segment,” Szymankiewicz says. “And now that’s all I do.”

Beer Law Center can be viewed as a firm focused on business law with an alcohol overlay, helping with corporate structure, licensing, permitting, trademarks, federal law, buying and selling, and more.

“We help sort through things and help you know what it all means,” Szymankiewicz says. “We found that over the years, Beer Law Center has turned into more of a business counselor.”

Szymankiewicz reiterates that over the past decade, the industry has evolved from a “build it and they will come” model to one more focused on running a business.

“Gone are the days of just making good beer,” he says. “In the past five or six years, we’ve seen more people entering the brewing world because they want to run a business.”

Szymankiewicz adds that means managing in a systemic, repeatable way. “Do we have systems and policies in place? And are we following those things?” he questions. An employee handbook can cover those questions and more.

“It’s a collection of policies that the company and employees agree to adhere to,” Szymankiewicz says. “If I’m an employee and I want to know my benefits, it should be written down. It shouldn’t depend on who I ask.”

He adds, “What are the ground rules for being here? It won’t be procedures, but it’s things like no smoking in the grain area, agreeing to use the PPE provided, and using wellies in the brewhouse, not your sneakers. Things like safety and safety concerns.”

Once the handbook’s policies are in place, it’s a matter of following them.

It’s a collection of policies that the company and employees agree to adhere to,

John Szymankiewicz - Beer Law Center

“You should review the handbook annually or from time to time to make sure all the policies are still right,” Szymankiewicz says. “If you find you’re drifting away, take the time to remind people about the handbook to reel it back.”

That could mean revising the policy, but if so, employer and employee communication is essential to the handbook.

“It’s no good to have a manual if you don’t communicate it,” Szymankiewicz says. “When you get a new employee, give them a copy and make them sign a document when given the handbook. When you change the policy, make everyone receives a copy it and maybe have them sign acknowledging it.”

He adds, “In that sense, it’s a living document, and people have to know the rules they need to live up to.”

What policies go in the document depends from business to business. Among some hot-button issues to address would be drinking at work, drug use, sexual harassment, inclement weather, employee scheduling to ensure equity with good tip days, calling out of work, and maternity and paternity policies, among others. But the important thing is to have something in place before it’s too late.

“What are the things important to you as a company, and what are you going to do about it? What is your policy?” Szymankiewicz says. “It’s easier to deal with the poo before it gets blasted through the fan.”

Szymankiewicz stresses, “You really want to think ahead. Always under promise and overachieve but never underachieve on a promise.”

The size of the brewery should dictate the amount of effort to create an employee handbook. If the business is all family members and communication is good, you might need minimal effort, Szymankiewicz says. But if you have wait staff, beer tenders, and, for larger operations, a marketing arm, you should pay more attention to creating your employee handbook.

“You need to manage your risks,” Szymankiewicz says. “You literally make and sell alcohol for a living. If you don’t have an alcohol-use policy, something is wrong. …You have to know how issues may affect your business as a whole and how it affects employees’ work.”

Szymankiewicz says that, at the bare minimum, you should have an employee manual if you have anywhere from five to ten people who work for the company.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be thirty pages,” he says. “But I would think about what is important and be consistent and equal [to all employees].”

However, more can go wrong if you have three locations and 110 employees. In that case, Szymankiewicz says that’s when “you should have more detailed policies and procedures.”

“And after you cross the fifty-employee threshold, you have to abide by federal guidelines,” Szymankiewicz says. “You need to know what the guidelines are and be able to adhere to them.”

You literally make and sell alcohol for a living. If you don’t have an alcohol-use policy, something is wrong.

John Szymankiewicz - Beer Law Center

Szymankiewicz points out that some requirements of employers when exceeding the fifty-employee threshold include offering health benefits and up to twelve weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for various personal reasons, including maternity and paternity, and providing demographic reporting, among others. Additionally, in some cases, companies that surpass fifty employees may have added state and labor laws to follow.

Szymankiewicz says the answer pertains to the size of the operation.

“If you have five to ten people, it doesn’t make sense to hire a law firm and pay $20,000 to $30,000 to put together this document,” he says. “Hell, I wrote a blog that says what to put in an employee handbook.”

Szymankiewicz adds, “If you’re at that level, you can write it and run it by a lawyer to make sure you aren’t breaking any laws.”

He reiterates that the creation of the document is proportional to the risk. Szymankiewicz says he has worked with breweries around thirty employees who have written their own handbooks. But he cautions not to go through Google and take it as gospel.

“My fear of someone Googling is they find something to fit into the company and it’s one they don’t follow,” he says. “For smaller companies, owners can generate the document but have a lawyer look that over.”

And as the economics of the business catapults your brewery into growth, you’ll have to revisit the document to ensure you touch on PTO, workplace violence, sexual harassment, unused vacation of a former employee, and other policies, which can be challenging for an owner on their own.

“As it gets more complex, you want more legal help,” Szymankiewicz says. “And until you have a full-time HR person, you want a good relationship with a lawyer.”

“You get what you pay for,” Szymankiewicz says.

He says that if you’re writing the handbook yourself and sharing it with a lawyer to review, you’re looking at a few hundred bucks. When you expand to multiple locations, over a hundred employees, and cross state lines, you might be looking at around $5,000 to $7,000 to have someone create a handbook covering all the guidelines to adhere to. But Szymankiewicz says the median is a more modest cost.

“The vast majority of my clients—fifty employees with one location or thirty employees with multiple locations,” he says, “you’re looking at around $1,500 or so.”

Szymankiewicz adds, “If you’re paying a lot more than that, you have to ask more questions. If you are paying a lot less, you should ask questions like, ‘Am I getting what I think I’m getting?’”

Photography courtesy of Fonta Flora Brewery

With his vast experience helping breweries navigate through growth and creating employee handbooks, Szymankiewicz has found that having that document translates to three clear benefits: clarity, consistency, and peace of mind.

Clarity

Szymankiewicz says having an employee handbook means that everyone at the company knows the rules.

“Even if you don’t know what the rules are, you know there are rules,” says Szymankiewicz, citing an anecdote from his firm about an office manager getting pregnant. “She asked about the maternity policy; I didn’t know it. But I know we have it.”

Consistency

If it is about a particular issue, the handbook means you deal with a situation the same way every time.

“Everyone has to be treated the same way,” he says. “This is the policy. Maybe it needs to change, but this is the policy.”

Peace of Mind

It’s about risk mitigation and risk management, according to Szymankiewicz.

“I know I have a policy,” he says. “If something happens, I know I can rely on this policy.”

Szymankiewicz admits that none of this is sexy or fun, but it’s integral to running a good business.

“It’s awkward conversations and paperwork,” he says. “But it’s becoming part of what we need to be doing. If it were fun and easy, it wouldn’t be called work.”

Though not licensed in all fifty states, because the alcohol law field is so niche, Szymankiewicz will likely put you in touch with a lawyer licensed in your state.

You can find everything you need to know at www.beerlawcenter.com, on all the social media sites @beerlawcenter, or email Szymankiewicz directly at [email protected].