A draft for counsel review, and not legal advice. Ardent Workshop is not a law firm, and nothing in this kit states the law of any state. That is deliberate: a template that guessed at your jurisdiction would be wrong in most of the country. Where the answer is local, this kit names what varies and hands the question to you. Have qualified counsel review your finished handbook before you issue it to anyone.
An employee handbook template you can actually edit
The kit starts where most buyers want to start: with words. 02-Employee-Handbook-Draft.docx carries starter wording for all 16 sections, from the welcome and at-will statement through time off, conduct, complaint routes and the acknowledgment page. It opens in Word, Google Docs or Pages, with no Canva account and no editor to rent.
The wording is written in a cautious register on purpose. It says “may” where a promise would be easy to make by accident, it states that the handbook is not a contract, and it never promises a fixed discipline sequence. Where small employers genuinely differ, a choose-one block gives you labeled alternatives. Your company’s details go in [bracket] fill-ins, and every place where state law decides carries a CHECK LOCALLY box instead of a guess.
Then a workbook that checks the wording
Handbook prose is easy to find. What a typical template does not tell you is which policies a business your size is actually subject to, or whether the sentence you just edited quietly became a promise. The Handbook Builder workbook is built around those two questions. It has 10 tabs and runs in Excel (2019, 2021 or Microsoft 365), Google Sheets or LibreOffice, and the download includes a ready-made Google Sheet you copy in one click, with nothing to import.
Applicability, computed from your own profile
Fill in Company Profile once: who is on payroll in each state, employees within 75 miles of your largest worksite, full-time equivalents, contractors, and what you offer. Applicability checks 16 federal laws against it and returns a verdict for each, then marks every handbook section Required, Conditional or Employer choice.
Federal floors only. The engine reads federal thresholds and nothing else. Many states set lower ones, so “not at this size” means not covered by that federal statute at your current headcount. It is never a finding that you have no obligation. Every CHECK LOCALLY question is listed once for each state you employ in, so you know which questions to take to each state’s rules or to counsel.
A screener that reads your words, not your self-assessment
Paste each section you have edited into the Draft Screener. It searches your text for the 29 entries in the Phrase Register: 24 risky wordings (promised raises, “permanent” employees, termination only for cause, rigid discipline steps, blanket bans that reach too far) and five sentences a handbook should carry, flagged when they are missing. Every hit comes back with a weighted score and the safer wording beside it, and the band reads Clean only when nothing is found and nothing is missing. The shipped draft scores zero; the screener is there for the edits you make to it.
A counsel review with a scope
A responsible handbook template ends with “have a lawyer review this,” then leaves you to hand over a whole document. Counsel Triage applies one points rule to every section, from its risk, your screener score and whether it applies to you, and sorts it into Must review, Should review, Optional, or Not needed yet for a Conditional section with nothing pasted into the Draft Screener. Each section comes with the question to ask, and the tab writes one scope sentence you can send ahead. You walk in with a short list of named sections instead of the whole handbook.
The parts that keep it true after you issue it
- Decisions lists 98 decisions, each with why it matters and one answer cell, and counts the open ones in Required sections as blockers.
- Acknowledgments records who received which version and when they signed, and shows who is not yet on the current one.
- Review Triggers compares your headcount, states and benefits today with your last review and flags the 15 review triggers that should send you back, such as a threshold crossed or a first employee in a new state.
- Dashboard pulls it together: the next step, the laws that reach you, decisions answered, the screener band, the counsel scope and acknowledgment coverage.
The workbook ships filled in with Sample Street Bakery, an invented 18-person business in two states, so you can watch every tab compute before you clear it and type your own.
Prefer paper? It all prints
The kit keeps a full print and offline path: 22 PDF files, including an 18-page Start Here guide, 16 section shells, a policy decision worksheet, a handbook update log, and fillable versions of the applicability engine and the counsel-review packet that compute in Adobe Acrobat or Reader.
Try the free part first
Twelve decisions to settle before you draft are free, ungated and yours to keep: the Handbook Decision Worksheet asks each one plainly, shows them answered for the same invented bakery, and includes one section of the starter wording (Employment Basics & At-Will) so you can see the draft before you buy. What it cannot do is the part the paid kit is for: give you the other fifteen sections as an editable Word draft, work out which federal thresholds your headcount has crossed, and read your edited wording for the phrasings that turn a handbook into a promise.
Own it, don’t rent it
A subscription platform keeps the document only while you pay. This is a set of files. It opens with no account, it keeps working when a subscription would have lapsed, and the workbook is yours to re-run every time your headcount or your states change. Handbooks do not go stale on their anniversary; they go stale the week the business changes, which is what the review triggers are there to catch.
