

A Not-Profitable Organisation set up to formulate programmes through several initiatives to mentor, empower and advocate for women and girls.
FAME foundation was established to solicit, encourage and advance the social, emotional and economic wellbeing of women and girls as well as formulate programmes within the framework of national development plan with a view to enhancing the participation of women and advocate for gender parity in the society. FAME foundation firmly believe that the entire nation, businesses, communities and groups can benefit from the implementation of programs and policies that adopt the notion of women empowerment.
Hello and welcome! Thank you for joining FAME Foundation, where we strive to Advocate, Empower and mentor women to realize their full potentials in the society and foster a gender equal society, can’t wait to see what you will achieve with us.
This employee handbook defines who we are and how we work together. we will do everything possible to create a fair and productive workplace, but we need your help. We’ve created this handbook to guide you.
This handbook isn’t a contract or a guarantee of employment. It’s a collection of our expectations, commitments and responsibilities. Please read this employee handbook carefully and consult it whenever you need to.
Fame foundation was established in 2017 to solicit, encourage and advance the social, emotional and economic wellbeing of women and girls as well as formulate programmes within the framework of national development plan with a view to enhancing the participation of women and advocate for gender parity in the society.
Fame foundation firmly believe that the entire nation, businesses, communities and groups can benefit from the implementation of programs and policies that adopt the notion of women empowerment.
Aderonke Ogunleye-Bello is the Executive Director at FAME Foundation. She is an international journalist of repute, passionate gender rights advocate and a Sports for Development Enthusiast.
She has obtained certificates from different educational institutions, including University of Ibadan, currently studying Peace Studies and Conflicts Resolution at a Nigerian University – a budding Women, Peace and Security Expert.
She has won numerous awards and received accolades as a journalist and gender advocate.
She is a 2019 Alumni of Global Sports Mentoring Programme, GSMP, an initiative of the US department of states. She founded FAME Foundation in 2017 and enjoys reading biographies, watching documentaries and volunteering aderonke@famefoundationwg.org
In this section, we explain our employee contract types and define our basic employment policies.
Full-time employees work at least 40 hours per week
Part-time employees are those who work fewer than 40 hours per week.
Full-time and part-time employees can have either temporary or indefinite duration contracts. Full-time employees under an indefinite duration contract are entitled to our company’s full benefits package.
Fame Foundation is an equal opportunity employer. We don’t tolerate discrimination against protected characteristics (gender, age, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, disability, veteran status.) We want all employees (including executives and HR) to treat others with respect and professionalism. In practice, this means that we:
Apart from those actions, we commit to penalizing every discriminatory, offensive or inappropriate behavior. To do this properly, we ask you to report any discriminatory action against yourself or your colleagues to HR. Our organisation will not retaliate against you if you file a complaint or discrimination lawsuit. Any employee who retaliates or discriminates will face disciplinary action.
Our hiring steps might vary across roles, but we always aim for a process that is fair and effective in hiring great people. When we are hiring for an open role, we go through these steps:
Steps may overlap so we skip steps when appropriate. Each member of a hiring team might have different responsibilities (e.g. recruiters source and hiring managers interview candidates.)
Throughout this process, we aim to keep candidates informed, communicate well with each other and give everyone an equal opportunity to work with us. Ask our recruiters for help whenever you need to enhance candidate experience or write an inclusive job description.
When we want to run background checks on candidates, the HR is asked for guidance. This process is sensitive and we must always abide by laws and ensure candidates understand our intentions. As a rule, commission a background check for finalists only. Use our contracted provider and ensure you have your candidates’ permission.
Volunteers who have same goals as the Fame foundation are always welcomed to the Volunteers group of the Organisation.
We have two conditions for persons who can qualify for our Volunteering Team. They should:
Our organisation uses an online form and an online platform where volunteers can apply. Employees can also reach out directly to our [HR/recruiters/Talent Acquisition Manager] with referrals.
We expect you to be present during your scheduled working hours. If you face an emergency that prevents you from coming to work one day, contact your manager as soon as possible. We will excuse unreported absences in cases of serious accidents, acute medical emergencies. But, whenever possible, we should know when you won’t be coming in.
We want to ensure that private information about clients, employees, partners and our organisation is well-protected. Examples of confidential information are:
As part of our hiring process, we may ask you to sign non-compete and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs.) We are also committed to:
We also expect you to act responsibly when handling confidential information.
This policy is important for our organisation’s legality and reputation. We will terminate any employee who breaches our confidentiality guidelines for personal profit.
We may also discipline any unintentional breach of this policy depending on its frequency and seriousness. We will terminate employees who repeatedly disregard this policy, even when they do so unintentionally.
To build a happy and productive workplace, we need everyone to treat others well and help them feel safe. Each of us should do our part to prevent harassment and workplace violence.
Harassment is a broad term and may include seemingly harmless actions, like gossip. We can’t create an exhaustive list, but here are some instances that we consider harassment:
Sexual harassment is illegal and we will seriously investigate relevant reports. If an employee is found guilty of sexual harassment, they will be terminated.
If you’re being harassed, whether by a colleague, customer or vendor, you can choose to talk to any of these people:
This tactic is appropriate for cases of minor harassment (e.g. inappropriate jokes between colleagues.) Avoid using this approach with customers or stakeholders.
Your manager. If customers, stakeholders or team members are involved in your claim, you may reach out to your manager. Your manager will assess your situation and may contact HR if appropriate.
Violence in our workplace is a serious form of harassment. It includes physical and sexual assault, destruction of property, threats to harm a person or property and verbal and psychological abuse. We want to avoid those incidents altogether, but we also want to be ready to respond if needed.
For this reason, we ask you to:
We will treat employees who verbally threaten others as high risk and they will receive an appropriate penalty. If HR finds that an employee commits an act of violence, we will terminate that employee and possibly press criminal charges. Employees who damage property deliberately will be solely responsible for paying for it.
Supporting victims
To support victims of workplace violence, we may:
Seek help from others early on to mitigate conflicts. For example:
If you are experiencing personal or work troubles, ask for help from a mental health professional. Check with your insurance provider to determine whether they cover any mental health services or ask HR for information on our Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Your discussions will remain confidential.
Our workplace is founded on mutual respect and we won’t allow anyone to compromise this foundation.
Workplace safety and health
Our organisation is committed to creating a hazard-free workplace. To this end, we will ensure workplace safety through preventative action and emergency management.
Preventative actions are any actions we take to avoid injuries or illnesses related to the workplace. We will periodically conduct risk assessments and job hazard analyses through a workplace safety committee to uncover health risks to employees. And we will establish preventative measures to address risks accordingly.
At a minimum, we will:
We also expect you to take safety seriously. Always use protective equipment and follow standards whenever necessary. If you deliberately disregard our guidelines, we may terminate you for your own and others’ safety.
Emergency management refers to our plan to deal with sudden catastrophes like fire, floods, earthquakes or explosions. Our emergency management provisions include:
Fame Foundation is a drug-free workplace. Whether you are an employee, contractor or visitor, you must not bring, use, give away or sell any drugs on company premises. If you are caught with illegal drugs, or show that you are under the influence of substances, you will face disciplinary action up to and including termination.
A list of prohibited drugs and substances includes, but isn’t limited to:
We prohibit employees from consuming alcohol during working hours, but they may consume alcoholic drinks in moderation at company events.
If you feel that a prescription drug (e.g. an anxiety mediation) unexpectedly affects your senses, thinking or movement, ask for the rest of your day off. If your manager suspects substance abuse, you may face disciplinary action.
You must not use medical marijuana in our workplace. We have the right to terminate you if your off-duty use of medical marijuana makes you unable to complete your job duties correctly. We
expect employees who hold safety-sensitive jobs (e.g. machine operators or drivers) to be fully alert and capable of performing their duties at all times. We may terminate you if we conclude your prescription drug use creates severe safety risks. If you need to use prescription drugs for a limited time and you think they may impair your abilities, use your PTO or sick leave. If your job includes
secondary tasks that are safety-sensitive and your prescribed drugs affect your ability to perform these tasks, we can make reasonable accommodations to ensure you and your colleagues’ safety. We won’t tolerate
substance addiction that results in violent, offensive or inappropriate behavior.
As an employee, all company policies mentioned above apply to you. We have some additional expectations about your behavior at work, which we outline here. We can’t cover every single case of conduct, but we trust you to always use your best judgement. Reach out to your manager or HR if you face any issues or have any questions.
Our company’s official dress code is Business/ Business Casual/ Smart Casual/ Native. However, an employee’s position may also inform how they should dress. If you frequently meet with clients or prospects, conform to a more formal dress code. We expect you to be clean when coming to work and avoid wearing clothes that are unprofessional (e.g. workout clothes.)
As long as you conform with our guidelines above, we don’t have specific expectations about what types of clothes or accessories you should wear.
We also respect and permit grooming styles, clothing and accessories that are dictated by religious beliefs, ethnicity or disability.
This section deals with all things digital at work. We want to set some guidelines for using computers, phones, our internet connection and social media to ensure security and protect our assets.
Our corporate internet connection is primarily for business. But, you can occasionally use our connection for personal purposes as long as they don’t interfere with your job responsibilities. Also, we expect you to temporarily halt personal activities that slow down our internet connection (e.g. uploading photos) if you’re asked to.
You must not use our internet connection to:
We allow use of cell phones at work. But, we also want to ensure that your devices won’t distract you from your work or disrupt our workplace. We ask you to follow a few simple rules:
Also, you must not use your phone in areas where cell phone use is explicitly prohibited.
Email is essential to our work. You should use the organisation email primarily for work, but we allow some uses of your company email for personal reasons.
No matter how you use your corporate email, we expect you to avoid:
In general, use strong passwords and be vigilant in catching emails that carry malware or phishing attempts. If you are not sure that an email you received is safe, ask our Security Specialists.
We want to provide practical advice to prevent careless use of social media in our workplace.
We address two types of social media uses: using personal social media at work and representing our organisation through social media.
You are permitted to access your personal accounts at work. But, we expect you to act responsibly, according to our policies and ensure that you stay productive. Specifically, we ask you to:
If you handle our social media accounts or speak on our organisation’s behalf, we expect you to protect our company’s image and reputation. Specifically, you should:
When you are experiencing a conflict of interest, your personal goals are no longer aligned with your responsibilities towards us. For example, accepting a bribe may benefit you financially, but it is illegal and against our business code of ethics. If we become aware of such behaviour, you will lose your job and may face legal trouble.
For this reason, conflicts of interest are a serious issue for all of us. We expect you to be vigilant to spot circumstances that create conflicts of interest, either to yourself or for your
direct reports. Follow our policies and always act in our organisation’s best interests. Whenever possible, do not let personal or financial interests get in the way of your job. If you are experiencing an ethical dilemma, talk to your manager or HR and we will try to help you resolve it.
We want to ensure that relationships between employees are appropriate and harmonious. We outline our guidelines and we ask you to always behave professionally.
Fraternization refers to dating or being friends with your colleagues. In this policy, “dating” equals consensual romantic relationships and sexual relations. Non-consensual relationships constitute sexual violence and we prohibit them explicitly.
If you start dating a colleague, we expect you to maintain professionalism and keep personal discussions outside of our workplace.
You are also obliged to respect your colleagues who date each other. We won’t tolerate sexual jokes, malicious gossip and improper comments. If you witness this kind of behavior, please report it to HR.
To avoid accusations of favoritism, abuse of authority and sexual harassment, supervisors must not date their direct reports. This restriction extends to every manager above an employee.
Also, if you act as a hiring manager, you aren’t allowed to hire your partner to your team. You can refer them for employment to other teams or departments where you don’t have any managerial or hiring authority.
Employees who work together may naturally form friendships either in or outside of the workplace. We encourage this relationship between peers, as it can help you communicate and collaborate. But, we expect you to focus on your work and keep personal disputes outside of our workplace.
Everyone in our organisation should be hired, recognized or promoted because of their skills, character and work ethic. We would not like to see phenomena of nepotism,
favoritism or conflicts of interest, so we will place some restrictions on hiring employees’ relatives.
To our organisation, a “relative” is someone who is related by blood or marriage within the third degree to an employee. This includes: parents, grandparents, in-laws, spouses or domestic partners, children, grandchildren, siblings, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, step-parents, step-children and adopted children.
As an employee, you can refer your relatives to work with our organisation. Here are our only restrictions:
If you become related to a manager or direct report after you both become employed by our organisation, we may have to transfer one of you.
If you want to invite a visitor to our offices, please ask for permission from our HR Manager/ Security Officer/ Office Manager first. Also, inform our reception/ gate/ front- office of your visitor’s arrival. Visitors should sign in and show identification. They will receive passes and will be asked to return them to reception/ gate/ front-office once their visit is complete.
When you have office visitors, you also have responsibilities. You should:
Anyone who delivers orders, mail or packages for employees should remain at our building’s reception or gate. If you are expecting a delivery, front office employee’s/ security guards will notify you so you may collect it.
Solicitation is any form of requesting money, support or participation for products, groups, organizations or causes which are unrelated to our organisation (e.g. religious proselytism, asking for petition signatures.) Distribution means disseminating literature or material for commercial or political purposes.
We don’t allow solicitation and distribution by non-employees in our workplace. As an employee, you may solicit from your colleagues only when you want to:
In all cases, we ask that you do not disturb or distract colleagues from their work.
Occasionally, we may need you to work more than your regular working hours. We will pay for overtime work according to local and national laws.
We pay your salary or wage at the end of the month by bank transfers.
We have built our performance management practices to:
To meet these objectives, we have:
If you manage a team, you are responsible for your team members’ performance. To conduct effective regular meetings and performance evaluations, we expect you to:
Set specific goals for each team member (and team-wide if
applicable.) Revisit those goals during annual and monthly performance reviews.
We owe our success to our employees. To show our gratitude, we will invest in our employees professional development. We want employees to feel confident about
improving their efficiency and productivity. We also want to help our employees achieve personal growth and success.
Apart from online courses, we offer these training opportunities:
Development is a collective process. Team members and managers should regularly discuss learning needs and opportunities. And it’s HR’s responsibility to facilitate any development activities and processes.
In this section, we describe what we offer to our employees. We provide information on our health insurance plans and benefits like work from home options and organisation issued equipment.
Employee health is important to us. We don’t discriminate against people with disabilities or health conditions, but we want to do everything possible to help employees stay healthy. At a minimum, we provide group health insurance to all eligible employees. For more information about our insurance package, contact HR.
We have also established non-smoking and substance abuse policies to protect employee health. We will create a workplace with minimal noise and good lighting.
We strive to keep our workplace safe, but accidents may happen occasionally. Employees who are injured at work (by accident or disease) can receive wage replacement, medical care and rehabilitation benefits according to workers’ compensation laws, when appropriate. Please inform us of your injury as soon as possible. Ask HR for forms that you need to file a claim or contact your state agency for workers’ compensation.
Our organisation has a workers’ compensation at the end of the year
There are some expenses that we will pay directly on your behalf (e.g. hotel rooms for work-related travel.) But, we ask you to keep track and report on those reimbursable expenses that you pay yourself. We reimburse employee expenses that are related to:
Not all travel expenses are reimbursable. For example, we will pay for your transportation to an airport for work-related travel, but not to a museum for a personal visit. Before traveling for business, contact HR to clarify which expenses are reimbursable within your particular trip.
Please keep receipts for all reimbursable expenses. You can submit them to your manager within one month after the date of each expense. If your manager approves your expenses, you will receive your reimbursement within one pay periods by bank transfer/cash.
As an employee, you may receive organisation cell phone, laptop or other device, furniture. Unless otherwise mentioned in your contract, any equipment we offer belongs to our company and you may not sell it or give it away. You are also responsible for keeping our equipment safe and in a good condition as much as possible. If your equipment breaks or malfunctions, let us know so we can arrange to get it repaired.
If you are part of our corporate cell phone plan, please use your phone within our plan’s restraints. You may have to pay any extra charges yourself.
Our equipment is insured for theft and damage. We ask you to inform us within 24 hours if your equipment is stolen or damaged. We might be able to trace stolen laptops and cell phones. Please also file a theft statement (affidavit) with the police and submit a copy to us.
We advise you to keep your organisation-issued computer, tablet and cell phone secure. You can do this if you:
In this section, we explain our provisions for your working hours and time off.
Our organisation operates between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. You may come to work at any time between 9 a.m. to 9:30 a.m depending on your team’s needs.
Our company observes the following holidays:
These holidays are considered “off-days” for most employees. If you need a team member to work on a holiday, inform them at least three days in advance.
We offer one week of paid sick leave. In states or countries where employees are entitled to a greater number of sick leave days by law, we will follow that law. You can take sick leave to recover from short-term illness, injuries, mental issues and other indisposition. If you have the flu or other contagious disease, please use your sick days.
If you become sick, inform your manager and send a sick leave request through our HR. You may take a partial day off or work from home, but we advise you to rest and recuperate for a day before returning to work.
Occasionally, we may ask you to submit a physician’s note or other medical certification and/or complete a sick leave form. We will do this for insurance purposes if you are absent for more than three days of sick leave.
Losing a loved one is traumatizing. If this happens to you while you work with us, we want to support you and give you time to cope and mourn.
For this reason, we offer One week of paid bereavement leave. You may take your bereavement leave on consecutive/non-consecutive days to:
If you have to travel long-distance for a funeral or service, you can take two additional unpaid days off. If you require more time, please inform the HR.
Caring for a newborn is an exciting time for parents. We want to support new mothers and fathers in their first months of parenthood with paternity and maternity leave. Afterwards, we will continue to support parents with flexible work options.
Our company offers three months of paid maternity and paternity leave. If local or national law stipulates longer leave, we will follow the law.
If you are about to be a new mother or father (either through childbirth or adoption), talk to HR to arrange your leave. Please give us at least three months’ notice before your leave begins.
Depending on local or national law, pregnant women can take part of their leave before labor. If you suffer complications during childbirth or have other issues, you can ask for an unpaid leave extension of up to two months. Contact HR as soon as possible to arrange this.
We are committed to helping new parents transition back to work after their leave ends. We offer:
In this section, we describe our procedures regarding resignation and termination of our employees. We also refer to our progressive discipline process that may sometimes result in termination.
Here we outline steps we will take to address employee misconduct. We want to give employees a chance to correct their behavior when possible and assist them in doing so. We also want to ensure that we thoroughly investigate and handle serious offenses.
Our progressive discipline process has six steps of increasing severity. These steps are:
Different offenses correspond to different steps in our disciplinary process. For example, minor, one-time offenses (e.g. breach of our dress code policy) will trigger Step 1. More severe violations (e.g. sexual harassment) will trigger step 5.
If you manage employees, inform them when you launch a progressive discipline process. Pointing out a performance issue is not necessarily a verbal warning and may be part of your regular feedback. If you judge that progressive discipline is appropriate, let your team member know and ask HR to help you explain our full procedure.
Managers may skip or repeat steps at their discretion. Our Organisation may treat circumstances differently from that described in this policy. But, we are always obliged to act fairly and lawfully and document every stage of our progressive discipline process.
Keep in mind that our organisation isn’t obliged to follow the steps of our progressive discipline process. As you are employed “at-will” in the U.S, we may terminate you directly without launching a progressive discipline process. For serious offenses (e.g. sexual harassment), we may terminate you without warning.
You resign when you voluntarily inform HR or your manager that you will stop working for our organisation. We also consider you resigned if you don’t come to work for three consecutive days without notice.
You are not obliged to give us advance notice before resigning. But, for efficiency’s sake, and to make sure our workplace runs smoothly, we ask that you give at least two weeks’ notice, if possible. If you hold a highly specialized or executive position, we ask that you give us at least a month’s notice, when possible.
We accept verbal resignations, but we prefer that you submit a written and signed notice of resignation for our HR records. We will reply with an acceptance of resignation letter within two days. HR will inform your manager that you are resigning if you haven’t already done so. Whether you want to announce your resignation to your team is up to you, but we encourage you to be open.
You can resign anytime at your own free will and nobody should force you into resignation. Forcing someone into resigning (directly or indirectly) is constructive dismissal and we won’t tolerate it. Specifically, we prohibit employees from:
Terminating an employee is always unpleasant but sometimes necessary. If that happens, we want to ensure we act lawfully and respectfully.
We may terminate an employee either for cause or without cause.
We will offer severance pay to eligible employees. We may also help employees who were terminated without cause to find work elsewhere, if possible.
We may also compensate accrued vacation and sick leave upon termination, depending on local law. Whenever local law doesn’t have relevant stipulations, we will pay accrued leave only to those who weren’t terminated for cause. We will also take into account union agreements and abide by agreed terms.
If you manage team members, avoid wrongful dismissal. When you terminate an employee for cause, we expect you to be certain you made the right choice and keep accurate performance and/or disciplinary records to support your decision.
When we terminate employees, we may provide references for those who leave in good standing. This means that employees shouldn’t have been terminated for cause. If you are laid off, you may receive references. Please ask your manager.
If you resign, you may ask for references and your manager has a right to oblige or refuse.
We will always strive for fairness and equal opportunity and penalize offensive and illegal behaviors. But, as laws and our environment change, we may revise and modify some of our policies.
We have established an annual revision of our handbook to bring it up to date with legislation and employment trends. We also ask you to contact HR if you spot any inconsistencies or mistakes. And, if you have any ideas about how to improve our workplace, we are happy to hear them.
Please sign to acknowledge that you’ve read this handbook and that you are committed to following our policies. If you need any clarifications, feel free to ask HR.
Date: …/…/…
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Plot 253, off Defense Quarters, Garki Area 1, Durumi 1, Abuja.
Landmark: The Apostolic Church, Area 1. Federal Capital Territory.
Tel: +2349070051404
Email: info@famefoundationwg.org