Employee manuals concept are not new. If done correctly, it can become a type of reference book which may answer questions sort of like a useful @& A forum. However, man does not live by bread alone but out of every word a Broker, associate or supervisor may utter. Feedback & input is the living rules book called in the everyday parlance...experience

If I could write the laws for my state, real estate rule books would be way down on my list...

I come from the corporate world where if you manage others you need a set of clearly defined rules, policies, procedures, standards, etc. so you can hold you staff accountable and discipline/fire them when you need to.

Maine does. All the policies should be in there Karen Climer to avoid misunderstandings and high emotions. More policies added and changes made to existing ones is an ongoing process for a professionally run real estate office.

A company should let their policies know to their people.  The government should be setting overall laws and rule and let the Brokerage take care of their own business.

I'm a fan of less government and more personal responsibility.  I do show my E&O carrier my policy book and signatures that all my agents have read annually as part of my "risk reduction" procedures. 

Good business to have one, hopefully brokers do not need the state to tell them this and do it on their own.

Yes and yes.  having the manuel and then following it are different matters.  enforcement of the manues is a very slippery slope.  I am for more policing of our industry but against more state intervention.  go figure.  

No.

N/A

I don't fancy myself qualified to write the laws for my state.

The attorneys for ours have done a very good job covering all the bases in their boilerplated PPM, which we can then edit for our own use.

One thing I learned from opening my office with a handful of agents, and moving to home offices a few years after is that offices with bricks and mortar will need to have different rules. My first office had a dozen agents and required floor time . . . and agents fought over clients and had access to transaction files they should not have, for example.

Floor time, broker's tour of homes and commission/client disputes between agents are pretty much obsolete these days for us.

There absolutely SHOULD be a set of rules for each brokerage. It's bad enough that many people are raised by wolves, give em a RE license and they become sharks to boot! LOLZ

Why are you re-asking this question. Yes, IL requires it but the discussion was also about when it should be updated.

I think it's at the Broker level or Team leader level. The state wouldn't have a clue what to write up.