Employee handbook best practices for business
14 October 2024
Employee handbook best practices for business
Want to create an employee handbook for your organization? Not sure where to start or how to make it effective?
An employee handbook can be a powerful tool for boosting employee morale, enhancing staff retention, and increasing productivity – if you follow the right process. From creating, managing, and sharing the employee handbook, you must consider all aspects to achieve the highest effectiveness and usability of your handbook.
In this article, we will briefly discuss employee handbooks, their contents and purpose. We will also discuss some best practices you can follow to make your handbook the most effective. Let’s get going!
What is an employee handbook?
An employee handbook is like a one-stop reference document given to your employees, where they can get all the relevant information about the organization. It’s as equally instrumental for new or on-boarding as it is for existing employees, as it can reduce uncertainty, affirm company values, and set clear expectations.
It contains all important information about the organization, from its vision, mission, and core values, to its expectations. The employee handbook also acts as the reference point for the employees to understand their rights and responsibilities and help them get familiarized with company policies, procedures, working conditions, and codes of conduct.
The employee handbook also covers information that employees may need to refer to from time to time, such as employment basics, working hours, benefits, compensation, termination rules, holiday approvals, and more.
It is also known as “Employee Manual,” “Staff Handbook,” “Personnel Guide,” and “Company Policies Handbook”. Irrespective of what you call it, you must remember that every organization has its unique personality and needs and your employee handbook should be designed keeping those in mind. So, let’s look at some best practices around creating, managing, and sharing your employee handbook.
Best Practices to Manage Employee Handbooks
Use a clear and easy-to-navigate layout
The best way you can ensure your employees use the employee handbook the way it was intended – as the single reference point for all information – is by keeping it easy to navigate.
So, for example, include a table of contents at the beginning making it super quick for people to find what they are looking for. You need to touch on everything required for new employees starting their very first day at work, and take it from there.
Start from the very beginning, i.e., workplace basics to include the company’s mission and related content. Then move on to expectations to include the code of conduct, workplace policies, and related segments. Then include information regarding compensation and development, perks, working hours, vacation, and termination policy.
Also, the best practice to create an easy-to-navigate handbook is by making it digital. A digital handbook has multiple advantages over a traditional handbook, such as: interactive navigation; ease of updating or amending, and a contemporary electronic format similar to modern communication platforms.
Keep it simple and engaging
Even though the information included in the employee handbook may be pretty routine, it doesn’t have to be boring. As discussed, the employee handbook is both the first reference point for new employees and an ongoing source of information for your existing employees – so it is the perfect place to showcase your company’s personality. For example, Nordstrom includes only ‘one rule’ in their handbook: laying down company ethics in a simple yet engaging way.
Including employee testimonials is also a useful way to include authenticity and fun in your employee handbook. The point is to keep it real, and simple, yet inspiring and engaging, so your employees find it interesting to come back to, rather than ignoring it or feeling it’s a chore.
Use the Right Tools for Creating, Publishing, and Sharing
If you don’t hire a writer or sub-contractor to create your employee handbook, you may choose to assign an in-house team. If so, it’s important to ensure you provide the right tools to enable them to succeed. Your team requires dedicated software that helps them edit, organize, share, publish, and manage documentation. For example Document360, an AI-powered Knowledge base, which helps create the employee handbook and store it in a central repository which can be accessed easily, searched quickly, and shared via link or PDF.
Incorporate appropriate multimedia elements
One area where you can make the biggest impact in terms of engagement and usability is by incorporating multimedia elements instead of plain text. Using pictures, videos, and even GIFs can make your employee handbook informative and effective but still fun to use.
Images and videos can help graphically disseminate information, explain complex concepts, or encourage engagement with action plans. They can be much more effective than plain text on paper, making it easy for employees to understand and engage. And the sky is the limit when you want to use multimedia formats. For example, you can use multimedia formats like PDF, Powerpoint presentation, Trello boards, etc., to create the handbook. Then benefit from the practicality of electronic employee handbooks by storing them digitally, making them easily accessible by everyone through a central knowledge base.
Regularly update content and communicate updates to employees
It can be operationally challenging and expensive to update a traditional hardcover employee handbook. Also, distributing it to ensure all employees receive the most up-to-date version costs extra money and effort. On the other hand, digital employee handbooks are an easy alternative to avoid this entire process altogether. Digital formats are easy and quick to update, and can be shared instantly to ensure everyone has the latest version.
Storing your handbook in a central knowledge base system means you don’t even have to share it every time you make an update. Everyone can access the latest version whenever they access it. A digital handbook also boosts compliance as companies can easily make changes and address the latest legal regulations as quickly as the need arises.
For an in-house team, creating a digital employee handbook may initially seem daunting, but with the right tools and advanced assistive technology available, you can learn to do it in no time.
Gather feedback from employee
The importance of feedback is often overlooked in organisations, and this applies as much to employee handbooks as anywhere else. The handbook not only empowers employees by giving them ownership of their learning and development but also provides a platform to participate in company policies and initiatives through feedback. So, it is important that you create opportunities to receive employee feedback on the handbook.
Conclusion
There is no doubting the importance of employee handbooks, whether for new or existing staff. So it’s equally important for organisations to create a handbook which is both informative and engaging to ensure staff get the most out of it. This can be done as either a paper document or a digital version, and created by outsourcing to professionals or through your own in-house teams. If so, choose the right tools to create your handbook and ensure it is becomes a critical tool to help with employee engagement, performance and retention.
Investing in human resources with PERFORM
The article is part of our series on How to Motivate Employees to PERFORM. Knowing how to motivate employees is one of the most important aspects of a manager’s job.
But as important is the need to manage the factors that contribute to that motivation, and to create the conditions for people to perform and realise their potential.
Our tool to help you achieve these management skills is the Apex PERFORM model. It stands for:
P – Potential
E – Expertise
R – Results
F – Focus
O – Opportunities
R – Resources
M – Motivation