(Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice.)
Employees will notice if their handbook doesn’t align with company practices. A custom employee handbook should reflect your company culture, explain your workplace policies, and stay relevant as your business changes. And if you use a generic employee handbook template without customizing it, your employees may struggle to relate to the content.
Employee handbook templates are written with a broad audience in mind, so they can be a helpful starting point. But if you don’t take the time to customize your handbook, your employees may wade through reams of information about employee conduct, time off, confidentiality, and more without understanding what decisions look like in your company, how your managers approach communication, or what success looks like where you work. And if there are common questions that aren’t answered, there’s more opportunity for your managers to make decisions that aren’t consistent with one another.
Handbooks.io can help you create an employee handbook that’s easy to understand, on-brand, and simple to keep up to date.
The Problem With Generic Employee Handbooks
Every business is different. Your employee handbook should represent the unique policies, culture, work practices, and locations that define your business. A customized employee handbook can help your employees understand what to expect, who they can go to with questions or issues, and where to look for helpful resources. And it can help you maintain consistency and have a go-to reference for workplace policies.
A great employee handbook serves dual purposes: It helps protect your business while giving your employees the clarity and context they need to do their best work. At Handbooks.io, we believe an employee handbook should support your employees while embodying your company culture and reflecting your company voice.
Your Handbook Is More Than a Policy Document
A good employee handbook does more than tell your employees what they can and can’t do. It also gives context about how things work at your company, what you value as a business, how you approach teamwork, and what employees can expect from you as their employer.
Company culture isn’t just the list of core values you walk new hires through. It’s also how you approach giving and receiving feedback, running meetings, flexibility, and supporting one another during busy stretches.
A good employee handbook can help answer common employee questions like:
- How do things work around here?
- What’s important to you?
- What behaviors do you encourage?
- What kinds of support are available to me?
- Who can I talk to if I’m not sure what to do?
When you provide helpful answers to these questions, your employee handbook can be a valuable resource for employees from the start of their employment relationship. And by combining this context about how your company approaches common situations with relevant policies, you can create a resource for new hires that continues to be relevant as your team and business change and grow.
What Should a Custom Employee Handbook Include?
Your employee handbook should represent your business, from your company culture to work practices to priorities and policies. Start by thinking about your company voice and using that to guide the way you write your handbook. Do you strive to use plain language and connect with people in a human way? Is transparency important to you? If so, it may make sense to use straightforward, accessible language and make it easy to navigate your employee handbook. Do you value collaboration? Describe what that looks like in action at your company.
Handbook topics vary from company to company. Some common ones include:
- Company mission, core values, and a welcome message
- Workplace expectations and standards of conduct
- Communication norms and ways of working
- Time-off and leave policies
- Benefits and employee support resources
- Reporting contacts and alternative routes for workplace concerns
- Manager responsibilities and leadership expectations
- Guidelines for hybrid or remote work
- Federal, state, and local policy content relevant to your employees
Your employees’ work locations help determine which policies apply. Explore our employee handbook requirements by state as a starting point.
Make It More Specific
When it comes to handbook content, specificity beats generality. For example:
- Instead of: “We value communication.” Describe the when, why, and who of team check-ins and point people to the right contact for time-sensitive questions.
- Instead of: “We support professional development.” Explain how employees can talk through development ideas and where they can send requests to take a course or attend an event.
- Instead of: “Contact HR with concerns.” Name your go-to reporting contacts and outline an alternate option for circumstances in which that person may be the subject of the concern.
Providing employees with specific next steps is more helpful than asking them to draw their own conclusions from broad statements.
When writing your employee handbook, use plain language and break things up with subheadings and short paragraphs. This makes it easier to use your employee handbook as a reference resource. And it keeps jargon and complicated sentences from getting in the way of your message.
Make It Yours
With Handbooks.io, you can customize your handbook and then share it with your team or clients as a PDF or download it as a Word file. Check out our employee handbook software to learn more about policy management, sharing, and acknowledgment options. Then, sign up for the plan that’s right for you.
Prefer to have it written for you? Our custom employee handbook services pair you with HR professionals who write your handbook around your culture, policies, and locations.
Personalization Doesn't Mean Sacrificing Compliance
Many business owners worry about whether they can make their employee handbook compliant and personalized. You can personalize your handbook’s tone and presentation while preserving required protections. Your company voice can come through in the welcome message, structure, and explanations employees use every day.
Compliance and readability go hand in hand. When your policies are easy to understand, employees can better comprehend what steps to take in certain situations, who to contact if they have questions, and how company policies apply to them.
It’s important to distinguish company choices from required policy content. For example, you can personalize your welcome letter and explain your communication practices in your company voice. Changes to substantive policy wording should be reviewed for your business and workforce.
Once you’ve personalized your employee handbook, it’s important to make sure that it’s relevant and accurate to your business practices, and that any employment law-related policies have been reviewed for your particular business and employees.
If Your Culture Is Custom, Your Handbook Should Be Too
Everyone says their employees are their greatest asset, but one of the best ways to show your team that they matter is by taking the time to craft an employee handbook that you’re proud of.
Your employee handbook is one of the most prominent documents that outlines how your business works, and you want to make sure it reflects your business, not someone else’s! Using a template is a great way to start, but making it your own will help you stay connected to your employees, emphasize expectations, and keep it relevant as your company evolves.
Your business is one of a kind. Your employee handbook should be, too.