The first HR policy document in most startups is written in a hurry, the week an incident happens. It is copied from a friend's company, references a leave year that does not match payroll, and contradicts what three managers have already promised their teams.
A policy set is not paperwork. It is the written version of decisions you are already making inconsistently.
Write these nine, in this order
1. Employment terms and categories
Define employee categories — full-time, fixed-term, intern, consultant — with the criteria for each, probation length and confirmation process, notice periods by category, and what happens during notice. This is the document everything else references.
2. Working hours, location and hybrid expectations
Core hours, expected days in office if any, time-zone overlap requirements, and who approves an exception. Vagueness here creates more manager conflict than any other policy.
3. Leave
Annual leave with accrual and carry-forward rules, sick leave and documentation threshold, statutory maternity leave, paternity or parental leave if you offer it, bereavement, and the leave year boundary. Two clauses are routinely missed: encashment treatment on exit, and leave without pay approval limits.
4. Code of conduct
Behaviour expectations, conflict of interest, gifts, moonlighting position, confidentiality, social media, and the disciplinary process with stages. State the process in plain steps — enquiry, written notice, response, decision — because that is what makes it defensible.
5. POSH policy
Legally required with a constituted Internal Committee for eligible establishments, including the external member, the complaint route, timelines, the confidentiality standard and the annual report obligation. This is the policy most likely to be tested and most often out of date.
6. Compensation, payroll and expense
Pay date, structure components, reimbursement categories with limits, approval matrix, and claim timelines. It prevents the endless "can I claim this" thread.
7. Performance and review
Cycle timing, who rates, what ratings mean, calibration approach, and how a performance improvement plan works. Without the PIP structure, terminations become ad hoc and risky.
8. Data, devices and information security
Asset issue and return, acceptable use, personal-device rules, customer data handling, and offboarding revocation. With India's data protection regime live, employee data handling belongs in writing too.
9. Exit
Resignation process, notice buy-out position, clearance checklist, full and final timeline, reference practice, and retention of records.
Rules that make policies usable
Write for the reader, not the auditor. One page per policy, short sentences, active voice. Anything longer is skimmed and then quoted incorrectly.
Name an owner and a date on every document. Version, owner, effective date, review date. Undated policies lose arguments.
Say who decides exceptions. Every policy needs a line: "Exceptions require approval from [role]." Otherwise every manager becomes the exception authority.
Match the working model you actually have. If your team is remote-first, do not import an office attendance policy. Contradiction between the document and daily practice teaches employees that policies are decoration.
Localise. Statutory leave entitlements, professional tax and shops-and-establishments obligations vary by state. A single national policy still needs a state annexure.
Rollout is half the work
Publishing to a shared drive is not rollout. Run a 45-minute manager briefing on the five policies they will be asked about — leave, hybrid, conduct, expense, performance — and give them the sentence to use when they do not know: "Let me confirm and come back to you today." Then collect an acknowledgement from every employee, and log it.
Review annually, and immediately after any of these: a statutory amendment, an incident that the policy handled badly, a new location, or crossing a headcount threshold that triggers new obligations.
What to do this month
If you have nothing, write documents one, three and five this month — employment terms, leave and POSH. Those three cover the most common disputes and the clearest legal exposure. Everything else can follow one per fortnight.
Forty pages of borrowed handbook helps nobody. Nine short, owned, dated documents that match how your company really works will hold up in a dispute, in a diligence review, and in the conversation where a manager has to say no.