Table of Contents
Where to start?
When you’re thinking about creating an employee handbook there are all kinds of things to consider. Read on to ensure your implementation plan covers off the essentials.
For the purposes of this article, we use the term document; in the context of this article this can refer to a printed paper document (hard copy) or an electronic file that represents the same content, but unprinted. When referring to an employee handbook, we could be referring to a HR handbook, policy and procedures manual, or anything containing information that is relevant to an organisation, the people who work or interact with it, and its operation. The organisation of an employee handbook is fluid, you may have an employee handbook that itself is comprised of other handbooks, such as health and safety handbooks, or human resources handbooks.
What is an Employee Handbook?
An employee handbook is an essential tool for businesses or organisations to communicate with employees. As a minimum the goal of any employee handbook should be to communicate what employees can expect from the business, and what the business expects from its employees. This can take the form of a physical printed handbook, a collection of printed documents grouped together in a folder, a collection of files and folders on a drive or network, or files held on some form of document sharing and management platform, or even a hybrid of more than one of these.
What constitutes an employee?
This really brings us to the first important point. If you refer to something as an employee handbook, to whom is the information within directed? We might assume here employees? What about sub-contractors, elected officials and other people who may be part of the organisation at a given time? When implementing your handbook, state exactly what constitutes an employee for purposes of the handbook. This can be achieved via a simple introductory section or overview, or even included in a “how to use the employee handbook” covering tutorial. Why do this? It defines clearly who the intended users of the handbook are, without relying on interpretation, this in turn reduces the likelihood of misunderstanding.
Why do I need an Employee Handbook?
To communicate – the key concept in the definition above is communication, that is communication from your organisation to the employee, and communication from the employee to your organisation. A common pitfall many organisations fall into here is considering their employee handbook as a rule book that offers a one-way flow of information, with little opportunity for dialogue.
Whilst there will certainly be some rules or expectations that are communicated, this works both ways. A one-way flow of nothing but rules mean you’re missing out on the opportunity to gather vital feedback and input from your employees, and so losing the chance to improve or evolve the way you do things, or even correct simple oversights you hadn’t considered. It’s well known that many sets of eyes will spot more issues than a single pair.
What’s more an employee handbook can house content that helps reinforce the benefits of working for your organisation; it might contain information about discounts you have negotiated with local coffee shops, or set out terms for bonus payments. In other words, your handbook should also contain information most employees are happy to seek out regularly, as well as the information your organisation wants them to know.
Another key consideration is time, as the old saying goes “time is money” – when an employee is looking for information, do you want them to get answers quickly and efficiently, or have them bumble around, asking several colleagues, calling HR and so on. Having no clear information source just means wasted time, wasted time finding answers, and wasted time answering queries.
Lastly, the information in an employee handbook can aid consistency, by that we mean consistency in behaviour and actions; by defining expected behaviours and actions you set people up to do the right thing. A simple example – If some of your employees deal with customer complaints, by having a defined set of expectations around how those complaints are dealt with, consistency is far more likely. Without, well it’s open to each employee to work out for themselves, meaning every customer with a complaint might receive a very different experience.
What information do I need in my Employee Handbook?
There isn’t a simple answer to this, as all businesses and organisations differ, and so does the information they will produce, use and receive; at times variation will occur, even within the same organisation (differing requirements in different territories for example).
Analysing the information you want or need to communicate
Analyse the information needs of your employees and classify that information accordingly. Clearly some information you will convey to an employee will be more important than others, perhaps having some basis in legislation, other information might be advisory, and at the opposite end of the scale we might have some nice to know information.
Why do this? Firstly you can more easily define priorities if implementing your handbook over time. Secondly, you can attach a value to each piece of information (as in why does this information exist and what does it bring to the table)? Lastly you can use this analysis to determine how important it is that a piece of information is understood and consulted, and from there feed it back into training material.
Is all of the information in the handbook relevant to all employees?
Having gained an understanding of what you want to communicate and the value of that information, it’s now a good idea to understand who needs awareness of each piece of information.
As a first step, look at the composition and interaction of people within your organisation and define the groups or labels that might describe them, then you can use those to define information applicability. In some organisations this can be achieved by simple department grouping, in others it’s less clear cut. You might for example have a ‘company car policy’ that applies only to the sales team in the organisation; if that’s the case then you know that the sales department needs an awareness of that specific policy; if that doesn’t follow a natural department grouping, then of course you might create a label ‘company car users’ that we use to define applicability of that policy.
Why do this? We can clearly state who the information within is intended for on the document, making it easier to determine at a glance whether it’s relevant.
In some online solutions we can customise the end user experience based on their information needs, so they see only what applies to them individually and nothing that doesn’t. The filtering is already done to show only what is directly applicable to the individual.
Can't I just use an Employee Handbook template?
Consider templates to be a starting point, if you use them at all. The sheer number of employee handbook and policy templates on offer means you can almost certainly find some useful templates that meet or are very close to what you need. If you’ve analysed the information required, then you can use that to identify template policies or procedures you can use as a starting point – Why a starting point?
Well, since the communication is between your business and your employees, then it stands to reason that the communication is specific to your individual business and not simply a generic template that needs to be completed, unless of course you operate a generic business. I’ve yet to meet a business owner who would be happy to describe their business as generic. An employee handbook is bespoke and reflects your organisation and your values.
There is always going to be some commonality of information that multiple unrelated businesses or organisations want to communicate to employees, particularly if they operate under the same legislative or regulatory frameworks and within the same sector.
That said, for the most part the content within your employee handbook will be bespoke to your business and set the tone and expectations that are unique to your business and the business you are striving to be.
If you’ve arrived at this page searching for ‘employee handbook pdf’ or ‘employee handbook template,’ this is probably not what you are expecting to read. What you will find here is a set of guiding principles and questions to ask yourself in order to determine what you need to consider when building your unique employee handbook, even if you are starting with a handful of generic templates.
There are of course many useful template documents for some of the policies you may want, or must incorporate into your employee handbook. These range from free offerings to paid subscriptions to regularly updated policies and documents for common requirements across a range of sectors that you can simply adapt to your needs. Of course, if the information is important then you would be wise to ensure that the templates you are using are both legally sound and that they make sense to the employees who are expected to understand them.
Employee Handbooks change and evolve over time.
In the same way your business evolves over time, an employee handbook also needs to evolve. An employee handbook is not a checklist item to be completed and forgotten. Much of the content of an employee handbook will be influenced or determined by external factors such as legislation, case law, or regulation, and even changes to the perks and benefits offered to staff. None of these stand still which means as things change, so your staff handbook needs to be able to evolve with those changes.
Employees come and go, roles and responsibilities change; all of these things can drive changes to your employee handbook, if a handbook is to be effective then it’s important that as the organisation changes, so the handbook changes to reflect reality. After your initial launch you might find employees are frequently asking questions about subject matter not covered in the handbook, or telling you that certain information is ambiguous or outdated, providing a further source of change and evolution.
This means that your employee handbook needs to be maintained in order to remain current, so you need to think about who will undertake that maintenance in order to be sure that your employees are accessing the current version of the handbook.
Planning and delivering an Employee Handbook
In addition to considering what your employee handbook should contain, the importance of the information within, and the applicability of that information to specific groups, you should also consider how and where this information will be delivered, and how you expect your employees to interact with it. Ideally you want an employee to be able to access the employee handbook whenever and wherever they need it, and to make that access as low friction as possible.
Given that we’ve established the information in a handbook will be subject to change, it’s also important to consider how you’ll ensure employees receive updates and notifications about such changes. When trying to decide how best to deliver your employee handbook to employees, consider the following questions:-
Organisation size
How many employees you have, and whether (some or all) of the contents of your employee handbook will apply to contract staff or third party employees and any special distribution requirements.
Access to Technology
How much access to technology does your workforce have, is your workforce mostly office based with access to desktop and laptop devices, or mobile? If they are mobile, do they have access to suitable mobile devices?
Employee location
Are your employees located in places where requirements will differ, are they covered by different employment law or other things that vary by location? Does this impact on access requirements?
Creation
Who will create the contents of the handbook, a handbook can contain a wealth of information, if your organisation is large or spans multiple jurisdictions then it's likely to be more than one person, and these creators are also likely to be employees who themselves need to refer to the handbook.
Distribution & Access
What access requirements will the handbook have, will the contents be applicable to all staff or will access needs vary? Is there a distribution problem to solve, what does this look like? How will distribution be acknowledged?
Structure
The structure of your employee handbook, be it printed or electronic can vary, it can comprise of one document, or multiple documents organised into a larger handbook, or even multiple handbooks grouped together into one larger handbook.
Maintenance
How and when will the employee handbook be updated and how will employees be made aware of those changes? How will you prevent outdated information being consulted?
Feedback,Ownership,Change
How will employees understand how to feedback any issues or suggestions they have, how will these be reviewed or accepted for incorporation?
Engagement
How will you measure engagement with the handbook? To improve anything you first need to understand how effective it is. Providing an employee handbook is not the same as it being used and understood.
Training requirements
Specifically if you are using any kind of computerised approach, it's important to also train your employees so that they understand how to use the system you choose to find and view the information they need.
By carefully considering each of these factors you can determine how best to implement and deliver your employee handbook.
How organisation size impacts your Employee Handbook plan.
It’s important to consider the size of your organisation when considering how to implement your employee handbook. The number of employees in your organisation, and the location of those employees has a direct impact on how much effort is involved to create, facilitate access to, maintain, distribute, and notify changes to your employee handbook.
One or many documents
When creating your employee handbook, is it better to have a single monolithic document that contains all of the information you want to communicate or is it better to have multiple related documents that together form the employee handbook? Would it be better still to have multiple handbooks all grouped together in one location for ease of access and use?
This choice influences the maintenance burden and can also determine how easy it is for employees to find information they are looking for. It also has a bearing on flexibility of presentation of information – Multiple documents, files or even handbooks mean you can deliver different information in different ways; a single document or file limits you to the capabilities of that single chosen file format. A ‘welcome to the company’ statement could for example be a video rather than something delivered in the written word.
A single document would mean the entire handbook is revised and redistributed every time there is a change to be made. If this is a large handbook then it makes sense that when updating the handbook, you also have a table of contents and even an index to update with hyperlinks where they make sense (there are ways to do this automatically in many creation tools).
An index and a table of contents are vital to the users of that documentation so they can quickly locate information they are looking for, and if the delivery format is electronic or online hyperlinks make sense. With a multiple document solution, then often the individual document titles can often serve as a table of contents for the entire handbook.
An employee handbook will frequently contain information that was created by multiple different people in the organisation, you may for example have a HR specialist dealing with policies that are influenced by employment legislation and have other people or departments dealing with other aspects of the handbook, finance for example.
In the case of a single document handbook, then having the responsible individuals or departments maintain that content can be cumbersome, contention for access to make changes can be problematic, as can preventing inadvertent changes of one area by people responsible for maintenance of another. It’s also fair to say that specialists in content may not be specialists in the authoring tools used to create or update that documentation, they might compose the content, but getting it into the right format, with a table of contents, in line with any defined document standards might be something someone else is tasked with.
For very small organisations, a single document solution works well, frequently a few people find themselves wearing many hats, but as an organisation gets larger, responsibilities tend to become more focused and/or specialised and in turn distributed across individuals. Those specialisations tend to have their own areas represented within the staff handbook. If an employee handbook is comprised of multiple documents, then it becomes more efficient to devolve responsibility for creation and maintenance of individual documents to departments or people.
From an employee’s perspective, having multiple documents also allows the employee to understand who was responsible for the creation of that particular piece of content and who to feedback to if they have any queries or suggestions. Contrast this with a single document solution, were there would typically be a centralised contact that acts as an intermediary, perhaps responsibility lies with the human resources department, and in event of any queries they would be the first port of call, passing the query on to the ultimate author of the content.
A single document or file makes it difficult to target information to the right people, if parts of your employee handbook only apply to subsets of employees, then by definition having everything in one document means people have to filter out the irrelevant to get at the content intended for them. This can be made easier by having applicability statements in the document but is a far cry from delivering only the information required to an employee.
The importance of feedback and ownership.
An employee handbook contains a lot of important information for employees to refer to when they have a question that they need an answer to. If that information is difficult to understand or ambiguous, then it’s important to have a mechanism in place to allow the employee to raise questions, suggest changes or improvements. Just because content makes sense to the author, it doesn’t follow that it will make sense to the reader.
With this in mind, it’s useful to annotate the employee handbook with details of the author of the content, along with contact details to be used in the event of an employee having a suggestion to make or a question that needs answering. This can be achieved by adding the author’s name and contact details to the document or to each individual document if your handbook is comprised of multiple documents. The requirement to display an author and contact details can be defined by having some formal documentation standards in place.
Change and Document Versions, Issue numbers and Revision systems
For any ‘thing’ that goes through multiple changes, it is important to implement an effective system of version control. In this article We’ve been using the terms publication, issue, revision, but what do they all mean? Well, some are clear cut, and we can use the definition in a dictionary to decide, others are less clear, and you will see different methods used across different industries and within academia.
What is important is that these issue or revision numbers, along with the date, are typically used to identify a change in the state, availability, and contents of a document.
If we have a monolithic handbook, then we can have one simple issue or version number, or revision number, or all three. Having such a nomenclature allows us to easily determine that we have differing forms of the same thing, in our case differing forms of an employee handbook. If we have multiple documents that comprise the employee handbook then we can have multiple individual documents each with their own issue, version, or revision number.
For example, we might use a document identifier of “HS-001”, which could have a document title of ‘Health and Safety Precautions when Entering the Warehouse’. This document may have had 5 different versions since its creation, and those 5 versions could have been effective for different periods of time sequentially, for example issue 1 through issue 5, with changes to content at each version respectively and issue 1 being the oldest, with 5 being the latest or current issue.
What is more important than getting bogged down in the semantics of the terminology, is that you pick some terminology and apply it consistently. In addition to applying terminology consistently, it also makes sense to define these terms as part of the employee handbook so that everyone referring to it understands exactly what a new issue, revision or version mean in the context of the handbook. Most formal document control systems and ISO quality standards will require that you have a mechanism of uniquely identifying a document as part of document control, but they don’t dictate exactly how this is done – issue and revision numbers are just one example.
For documentation that requires any form of control, it’s usual to include whatever version tracking method is chosen on the individual documentation, along with a date.
An example of a simple system that uniquely identifies a document would be to have the following fields and definitions.
Identifier – a meaningful short set of text that allows identification of a document. e.g. HS-001. These can convey additional meaning, for example if the content relates to health and safety, we might use a prefix HS followed by a sequential number. Again, if this is the intention, it makes sense to indicate the meaning of prefixes somewhere within the handbook; perhaps a guide to documentation standards also held within the handbook.
Issue number – a simple sequential number, starting at 1 that is incremented by one each time a change is made to the document, the higher the number the more recent the document.
Issue Date – the date the changed document was added to the handbook and made available to employees.
These are typically used in the footer, or title of the document or to some degree both, so the document itself contains this additional data.
The three items above would serve adequately to identify a document uniquely, if referenced in another text or email, or even legal proceedings. Of course, this is just one example, there are a myriad of ways to achieve the same result. If we are distributing handbooks via printed copy, then it follows that the Issue date as defined above, might not necessarily be the same date the content is widely available to employees, we might have to distribute copies to locations or individuals.
Access to the Employee Handbook
In order to provide access to the staff handbook, should you create a printed paper copy, hold it in a central location for staff to consult, or should you create multiple paper copies and distribute one to every employee when they start? Perhaps you have shared folders on your network where you can place the document(s) for employees to consult, if not maybe one of the many online file sharing platforms would be the answer.
You could even use generic document management systems or software dedicated to solving all the above problems. Of course, the technology-based solutions are only viable if your workforce have access to the network/internet and suitable devices. All these options come with some kind of training burden.
The impact of workforce location or employment jurisdiction
Larger organisations can often have a workforce that is spread across facilities located in different counties, states and even countries. The facilities can vary greatly based on the type of work that occurs within them. This can have an impact on the most suitable method by which you deliver an employee handbook and can also greatly influence the content with the handbook.
Policies or other information within the handbook can be created to comply with some piece of legislation or regulation, and the regulation or legislation can vary between states and countries. In cases like this you might have to address each case in turn in the content of the handbook and coming up with an acceptable policy might involve the input of multiple specialists in differing locations. What’s more, the applicability of that policy will vary depending on where the employee is located. There are multiple ways to deal with this, one would be to create a catch all policy that best satisfies the most demanding requirements and apply a policy uniformly.
Inevitably though, there will be scenarios where a particular policy has exceptions or differences based on the employee’s location, and taking a one size fits all approach comes with a cost; for example, you could be in a situation where you adopt policies in country X because of rules in country Y only to find that carries a cost or drives down efficiency. If you try to differentiate based on employee location by having content with multiple appendices, or caveats, then you risk employee confusion.
A better solution would be to tailor a policy to the need, and have the employee see that, and only that version of the policy based on their actual location. If you have a monolithic document style handbook, then this is difficult to achieve without a country X edition or a country Y edition. With multiple document solutions it’s easier to achieve, and these could be differentiated via some characters in the identifier (-UK, -US, -AUS for example) of the documents that vary based on employee location, again whatever system is chosen needs to be applied consistently and documented elsewhere in the handbook, so employees understand the conventions.
Training people to use the Employee Handbook
As with most things, it isn’t simply a case of putting an employee handbook together. Employees will need some training to use the employee handbook, the time and effort involved here varies greatly, based on how the handbook is implemented and the technology that is used. In all cases though, training people to use an employee handbook can be done as part of onboarding or induction training.
Now we have some an idea of some of the considerations, let’s look at possible ways we could implement an employee handbook. We’ll start by looking at traditional paper copies and weigh up the pros and cons of each approach.
Printed Employee Handbooks
A single document held in a central accessible office would probably be appropriate for a smaller organisation where all staff are in the same building at the same time. This central copy solution tends to fail when the size of the organisation increases, with people working different hours, in different locations, where access to the handbook can become problematic. If some of your employees work night shifts, then do you just leave the office open and allow uncontrolled access all the while hoping it doesn’t get mislaid, or should you designate a night time gatekeeper to control access to the handbook?
How do you deal with contention for access, if 5 people want the handbook at the same time, how is this resolved? Should you limit access or print more copies? If you have multiple facilities, you need to get a copy to every facility wherever that might be and keep those copies updated and it would also be useful to have a record of when those copies are received.
At this point, you may be shouting at the screen that giving each employee an individual copy of the employee handbook when they start work is a more suitable solution, perhaps as part of their induction into the organisation. In cases where the employee handbook doesn’t change too much, and the changes aren’t critical in nature, or likely to leave you open to dispute, then this would probably work.
If the contents of your handbook are likely to change frequently, then you can end up with a maintenance and distribution headache, imagine updating your employee handbook 4 times a year and having to get 500 copies out in a timely manner to every employee, you could end up in a situation where half your staff have version one of the handbook, half have version two for a significant period of time, and that’s without even considering who will manage, log and distribute the new copies of the handbook or the costs of doing so.
Training for hard copy Employee Handbooks
Hard copy or paper employee handbooks are likely to have the least training effort required. A simple introduction around how to use the handbook can be placed at the front, and as the concept of a book commonly places introductory material at the front, this should suffice.
Is the Employee Handbook used and understood?
In some jurisdictions, it’s desirable to gain an acknowledgement from an employee that they have read and understood some, or all of the contents of the handbook. When considering paper employee handbooks, all too often we see an acknowledgement of receipt extrapolated by management to be an acknowledgement of committal to memory. Important to note here that receiving and acknowledging is not the same thing as consulting, reading or let alone remembering all the contents within.
With personal copies of an employee handbook acknowledgment of receipt can be achieved via a register the employees sign when receiving the handbook – there’s no real effective method of tracking engagement after that point.
If your only evidence an employee had access to information detailing what is expected of them is a signature acknowledging receipt of the initial version of a handbook provided to them when they started work many years ago, then that’s all you have, an acknowledgement of receipt. Even if you have multiple acknowledgements for multiple versions, you don’t know for sure how often they consulted that handbook if they ever did, whether they found anything ambiguous or misleading, or even if they have long since forgotten there was something in the handbook about a particular expectation you have of them.
For a centralised copy, or copies, engagement could be measured by requiring completion of an access register before access is granted to the staff handbook. This is known as controlled access. An access register at least gives some picture about engagement or perceived engagement allowing an understanding of how often the handbook is consulted, and by whom, but even so if left simple doesn’t provide an indication of the content the employee engaged with.
In the printed world, even if your handbook is comprised of multiple documents, 99% of the time these would be collated together in a binder to form the handbook or one of multiple handbooks, even then you only know that employee “A” consulted the handbook on this time at this date from a log, you don’t know the specific documentation consulted.
Distributing personal copies means only that an employee had a copy of the employee handbook at a given date and time. It’s not the same as measuring whether the employee is engaging regularly with the handbook, and it doesn’t guarantee that the employee will retain access, physical paper copies are lost or mislaid, used to prevent cup marks on tables and so on. There’s also no way to determine which parts of the handbook are frequently referred to or those that are never consulted. Personal copies also introduce the problem of removing obsolete versions, repeatedly issuing new versions doesn’t remove older obsolete versions without some additional steps.
There are things you can do to mitigate some of the issues above and improve the chances of positive engagement – you could tie the contents of the handbook, to some form of onboarding and induction training, carry out an assessment and record that assessment. If things change frequently then you can repeat this process as often as you feel necessary, or even adopt some form of regular periodic continuation training. You then need to have someone set aside the time and effort to manage that process, and every employee needs to have the time to complete that process.
What did the Employee Handbook say on this date?
From time to time it can be useful to be able to view the employee handbook that was in force on a particular date. This can be valuable for several reasons, in the event of disputes or changes to practice and expectation, in line with legislative or regulatory change for example. For paper handbooks, this can be as simple as retaining the old copy in an area where it isn’t generally accessible so as not to be confused with the current edition. Of course, this is only useful if there are supporting records indicating the dates the information was in force, and if the archived copies are not mislaid or destroyed.
Why did the Employee Handbook change?
In the printed handbook world, even when historic copies are retained it can be difficult to understand what changed and why, short of doing a side-by-side comparison between versions. We can use version issue and revision numbers as previously discussed to uniquely identify a given document at a particular version and can take advantage of some of the change tracking capabilities available in some authoring tools to highlight areas of change, like Microsoft Word, for example. It can also be useful to embed the history of the document within the document so the employee can see at a glance what has changed and why, particularly in a hard copy or paper-based system. For example:-
Issue 1 – Initial issue – 1/3/2018
Issue 2 – Removed paragraph 3 and added section of radon extinguisher system – 5/4/2019
Issue 3 – Added additional clarification on evacuation procedure during a fire alarm -5/5/2019
Issue 4 – Added information to be communicated to visitors to the facility – 1/6/2020
Issue 5 – Added information on obtaining temporary access to bonded area – 31/7/2021
In this way an employee isn’t faced with reading the entire document to determine what has changed since they last read it.
Employee Handbooks as files in shared folders/file sharing systems
Printed paper copies are best suited where you have a workforce that doesn’t have access to technology. If your workforce does have access to technology, then of course it makes sense to use what you have, to deliver your employee handbook. After all it’s highly likely that the files comprising your employee handbook will be created on a computer and very likely stored on a network, so if you can distribute from the same network, you can remove the printing stage and go straight to the distribution problem.
Shared folders – These are folders on your computer network that you allow everyone in the organisation to access, into which you can place files for them to access.
You can organise these files into a structure by creating further directories, and it’s not uncommon to also include another document in each folder detailing further information about the files within one or more document register type files; we’ve seen many examples of Microsoft Excel being used for document history files in this kind of system. This could include additional metadata about the document, such as when it was placed into the folder, why it was placed there and so on. This folder is then communicated to employees as being the employee handbook folder.
Typically, you have two classes of access that will be required, read/write access for creators, and read only access for users. The capabilities of this kind of solution vary a great deal, depending on whether you are using something that comes as part of your network operating system or a dedicated third party file sharing service. More complex employee handbooks might contain content that is a little more restricted, for example some content restricted to management roles, or some content relevant to warehouse staff, but not relevant to office staff, in which case permissions are a little more complex.
Some of the considerations of the paper employee handbook world are still valid, for example the single vs multiple document question remains valid, and the core considerations when choosing between the two remain the same. There are though now, additional considerations. Firstly, access to the content needs to be appropriate. From the employee handbook author perspective, if there’s a single file solution, then you only need to think about write/creation access to that single file.
If you have an employee handbook comprised of multiple files, each authored by specialists within the business, then you perhaps need more granular access control. The HR specialist should be able to edit the parts of the handbook they are responsible for, not for example the documents the finance department are responsible for. This goes for the ability to create and remove content as well.
So far so good, how do we ensure that the people with write access don’t leave draft copies in the “live” folders by mistake? Technically, we can’t, we need to make sure the authors understand that the folder is a “live” folder and anything in it is considered part of the employee manual, sure we can start to watermark documents with draft stamps and so on, but you really don’t want draft documentation mixed with current documentation in the first place.
Similarly, if some of the content is no longer considered relevant for whatever reason, it needs to be removed to prevent misuse (and optionally archived for future access in the event of some investigation or question of compliance). How should we prevent relevant content being removed?
If you have more complex needs where you need to ensure that the employee handbook is more tailored, so that for example, employees see only what is relevant to them based on location or role, then you can quickly get into a situation where you have a working system in place but permissions are a headache and the handbook is vulnerable to simple mistakes affecting the integrity and accessibility of the information within.
Couple that with the fact that in many organisations setting access controls on network shares is generally managed by the IT department, and in extreme cases those permissions are controlled by outsourced IT partners. A simple permission change then involves a helpdesk call, raising a ticket and a wait within the agreed service level agreement. All far from ideal.
There’s also a question of information presentation, it might be that the format of the handbook and documentation within is very simple, it could also equally be the case that the content needs to conform to certain guidelines or meet certain documentation standards, or that the authoring tools used to create and maintain it require a little more than average knowledge of that authoring product.
A better solution here might be to designate someone responsible for “publication” to the employee handbook. This person or persons then takes on responsibility for maintenance of that folder and its contents and controlling access. For organisations with complex presentational expectations, the same person might also take on responsibility for ensuring the presentation is consistent with any defined documentation standards, tidying up that content and annotating additional information onto the document, ensuring titles are meaningful and identifiers are appropriate.
This is a simple publication workflow, whereby the document author/specialist makes the changes required, these are then communicated to the person responsible for publication, who tidies up the content and checks for compliance with any defined document standards, before making the required changes in the folder, including updating the document and any additional documentation with any required metadata.
This is an improvement, but we still have several holes to consider. Firstly, when the handbook changes, how do we notify the employees? We can do this with a simple email, and next time the employee accesses that document they will access the latest version. In terms of the notification, what should we communicate? “Hey, the policy on home working has changed”.
That’s a start but isn’t it better to communicate a brief synopsis of why it changed. “Policy on home working changed – updated to reflect that employees are now allowed to use personal devices to access company email”, in that way the employee can make a call about whether they need to check out that change imminently and scan the document for the areas of change. This is good, but if you have lots of updates, then the emails will be frequent and collating the contents of those mails will be a task in itself.
Secondly, what if the content being changed lies within the domain of two or more departments or specialists? How do we change the procurement procedure and have finance sign off on that change? Emails would be one way, but it’s not really appropriate; email is for communication and what we actually want to achieve here is a record of change, and participation in that change. An email system isn’t a records system, so we should strive to ensure change records are encapsulated in the employee handbook system itself.
It’s better to have a dedicated change control form that gains an acknowledgement of acceptance before the change is published, in that way we can be confident all involved parties have approved the change before it’s unleashed on the employees for them to refer to. This could be as simple as gathering signatures, from all involved parties, on the change control form prior to publication, then filing that form away, that way we get a change history.
This though then raises the question of how that form is made available, completed and consensus agreed, and also introduces the problem of concurrent changes, that is to say, how we might prevent two changes being proposed to a document at the same time. In any event, there are ways to deal with such problems, typically involving having someone responsible for document control. Once a change is processed, we could even file those forms in the same area on the file share for employees with an interest to consult. People can be more receptive to change if they understand the “why” behind the change.
As discussed on our examination of paper handbooks, often times it can be useful to retain archived copies of handbooks, with a shared file system type solution this can be as easy as taking a copy to a separately controlled folder at time of publication to the live area, or could even in some situations be archived automatically with a little help from the IT department, how practical this is will be determined by your organisation.
When compared with a paper system, this is an improvement; how improved really depends on the platform or operating system you are using. It’s possible to do effective conditional access, some can track access to files (and so offer a crude form of engagement measurement), archive periodically in an automatic way, so it’s possible to rewind to a point in time, and some even offer things like subscriptions to folders.
The distribution problem is then removed since all access is centralised. Most of these features are file system level features for the benefit of IT administrators. This is in effect using general file system access measures and controls to manage your documents, it works, but requires a lot of manual effort to keep on top of it and enforce some checks and balances.
Another downside is that the user experience is less than ideal, both from a creation and publication perspective and from the perspective of the end user. Managing permissions and access can be painful, especially if it involves raising tickets and so on. There’s little to prevent employees or other users copying the documentation to some other location and referring to that location instead (meaning there is potential for outdated information to be referenced). There isn’t an easy way to at a glance, at least not without creating and maintaining some other documentation or storing data in Excel spreadsheets, the relationships between documentation and regulation, legislation or other arbitrary metadata.
If the users are mobile, they may struggle with access to shared file system-based solutions finding them less than friendly, and this really violates the low friction access requirement we need, we want to encourage rather than discourage use of the employee handbook, and that means making it easy to use.
Dedicated Employee Handbook or document management software.
There are lots of systems to choose from when looking to implement your employee handbook online, most document management systems can cope with many of the things needed to create an effective online employee handbook.
Let’s first look at the types of solution you might find and briefly consider the differences.
This type of software broadly falls into two categories. The first is a solution that is available online, often referred to as SAAS [software as a service] where you simply use the system without worrying about any of the underlying IT setup, typically all you need for this kind of solution is an internet connection and a web browser.
The second type is what is referred to in IT parlance as ‘on-prem’ or on-premise. This is software that you buy or license that is installed to your local network and possibly individual computers (on your premises), this runs on equipment managed by your own IT provider, sometimes also with the ability to access from the internet either directly or via things like company VPN connections. This might have a dedicated client built for your operating system like Microsoft Windows or Mac OSX, or even dedicated mobile and tablet apps for Android and iOS.
As one of the goals of an employee handbook is to make it as easy as possible to access and use, we would recommend the SAAS solutions over the more traditional applications that involve installation to a specific device or one kind or another. Why? Well, this way you don’t need to ensure your employees have a specific kind of device in order to access the handbook, and you can also easily identify where a problem lies if something goes wrong with the software.
Beyond the broad choices between types of software, the differentiators with all of these services are the features they have vs the features you need or want, the price you will pay for those features, and the complexity, in terms of administration, training and end user usability.
We’d recommend looking for a solution that supports the following features; how applicable these features are to your organisation will vary, so if we imagine what a relatively small organisation with employees spread across the globe might need, we’ll list the features we believe are essential.
Features that benefit the employee
The system must be fully online, meaning it’s accessible from anywhere you have an internet connection. It should also be accessible on as many device types and platforms as necessary. Why? Employees ideally should be able to access their handbook when they need to, and that includes at home. If an employee wants to read up on something related to a matter that is highly personal, for example like a maternity policy, then they should be able to do this wherever they choose.
Access to the system needs to be controlled. Why? having a fully public employee handbook is never a good idea, why expose why, when, and how you do things to the entire world, you’ll no doubt be aware scammers are usually pretty adept at taking information of any kind and misusing it for criminal purposes, couple that with related information that can likely be obtained from other sources about your employees and a scam becomes more feasible. Don’t make it easy to do this.
Access to the system needs fine grained access controls – it should be possible to control the documentation specific employees can see. Why? In this way you can create multiple handbooks for differing groups of employees, and/or policies and procedures in handbooks that are available to only the people who need them, and not overload employees with irrelevant information. Have a HR handbook for HR, an employee handbook for all employees, and a Health & Safety handbook all in one system, why force employees to navigate multiple information sources.
It should be possible to vary content based on geographic location, or some other variation in the organisation that requires a separate piece of information, for example a maternity policy may have differing requirements in different employment jurisdictions. It should be possible to ensure the right policy is delivered to the employee based on this differentiator.
The system should provide the employee with tools that make their use of the system quicker and easier – such that employees can quickly access documents they refer to frequently, features like the ability for a user to add favourite documents, search within the contents of documents, or recall important items they have previously been notified about.
The system should collate information about employee handbook updates automatically, and that update information should be based on the information that is relevant to the specific employee. In other words, update notifications should be personal to the individual employee based on updates to the information they have access to, and only that information.
The employee handbook system should allow employees to be notified about important additions or updates to the handbook, and optionally allow the employee to positively acknowledge the receipt and understanding of the information. This should be available in addition to the standard update mechanism so important updates are more easily identified. If an update is important, it’s also critical to understand how long it’s likely to take for this information to be read by employees.
It should be possible for an employee to identify any updates quickly and easily when using the system, and/or notify them directly about updates in an automated manner. Make it easy for employees to understand what’s changed, why and when.
If the handbook or handbooks are large, it should be possible for the employee to get the information most relevant to their role quickly and easily.
The system should be simple to understand and easy to use. End user training should be possible in minutes rather than hours or days.
The document metadata (who has responsibility for the contents, who has looked at the document, when the document was changed and why) should all be held in the system and available to employees so they can understand who to contact in event of a query, why a document change was made, and the history of the document.
If an employee has feedback, an idea for improvement or some other suggestion, it should be possible for them to propose a change to a document within the handbook online.
Features that benefit the organisation
Employees should always get the current/latest version of any document in the system and not be able to access outdated or irrelevant content. Why? This one is self-explanatory.
It should be possible to see which version of any policy, procedure or document of any kind was available to employees at any given time. This should be selective rather than global, so for some types of documents, all versions are available in an access controlled archive, for others the requirement can be omitted along with the dates they were available. Why? Some documentation in the handbook will exist to demonstrate compliance with regulatory or legal requirements, in the event of a query or dispute it can be useful to refer to what was in force at the time vs what is in force today.
It should be possible to create a completely custom information structure that reflects the needs of the organisation, whether this is one handbook, multiple handbooks, or multiple sections. In other words, you should be able to specify the structure of your handbook, and not have the solution dictate it to you. Why? Structure can give meaning and aid ease of use, all organisations have some implicit structure to start with, reflecting this to some degree can also aid usability for the end user employee.
Documentation can be associated with roles within the organisation, this allows employees to know who to contact in the event of a query, facilitates an online change control process, and can be used to enforce regular documentation reviews. When the holder of a role changes, or the role is consolidated into another, the system should allow this to be managed easily and quickly. Why? Documentation should be reviewed, and changes should be introduced in a controlled way with a traceable approval procedure, employees should be able to contact authors with queries.
It should be possible to selectively ensure that documentation in the employee handbook is subject to periodic review, this helps ensure content is kept relevant and compliant with any regulatory or legislative change. Why? Over time some documentation will become obsolete, and some will change significantly, this can help ensure that documentation is kept current and compliant.
It should be possible to measure engagement with the documentation in the handbook, monitor which documentation is accessed, how often, or not as the case may be. Why? You have guidelines, policies and procedures in place, you need to ensure they are being consulted regularly.
It should be possible to see how often documentation changes, and why, understand the sources of change and the impact on your organisation. Why? Are changes being rushed through and not properly considered, is there a process, policy or procedure causing a particular problem, a document with a significant number of changes could indicate an underlying problem.
It should be possible to selectively place some documentation onto role specific reading lists. Why? this allows role or job-function based documentation to be easily highlighted and accessible to the employee
The system should support export of metadata for further analysis in analytical tools. Why? This can allow you to analyse engagement, understand whether important information is reaching the employees it needs to and which documentation you have that is related to things like legislation and regulation.
It should be possible to set documentation to automatically expire from the system (with optional retention) or moved to an area with more restrictive access –Why? This is useful for short term notices or advisory bulletins, if you have many of these, having them auto expire after a set time period is far easier than managing that process manually.
It should be possible to establish relationships between document and regulation or legislation, or any other arbitrary metadata. Why? If a piece of legislation or regulation changes, you need to be able to quickly identify any policies, procedures or other documentation you have in your handbooks and update or remove it as required.
It should be possible to designate important information for employees to read and acknowledge that they have received and understood that information. Why? If you have a change that has happened as the result of an incident or need to change something and raise awareness quickly, it helps to have a mechanism that differs somewhat from the standard update notifications. A little like being notified about a security issue vs being notified about a change to car parking rules. Having the ability to have employees positively acknowledge receipt and understanding helps ensure the message is effective.
It should be possible to establish relationships between documentation held within the system. Why? Frequently in larger handbook systems, one document will refer to another, by establishing a relationship you can understand the impact of changing one document and check for any associated changes that may need to be made to related documentation.
It should be possible to selectively annotate documents users have downloaded from the system. Why? Employees could store copies of documentation they have downloaded locally on their devices, and refer to that, instead of referring to the master copy held on the system, by annotating the document with the users name and time, or some message such as ‘uncontrolled copy’ it reduces the chance of copies being left in unapproved sources, and if they are, helps identify what the source of those uncontrolled copies was.
The system should support documentation and file formats you use to produce your existing documentation. Why? If you choose something you don’t currently use then you are introducing additional training requirements, if you already use Microsoft Office, then a system that supports Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint would make sense, the time to get up and running is greatly reduced.
The system should have features that allow you to ease induction and onboarding, specifically with regard to the handbook system itself. Why? This allows employees to be given a very quick initial introduction (how to log on to the system and so on) and then the system can show them what they need as a new starter.
Negative aspects of document management or employee handbook systems.
Employees need access to suitable devices to access online solutions, the type of device required can vary depending on the solution you are considering. We’d recommend going for a system that can be used on as wide a range of devices as possible to avoid any kind of vendor lock-in.
If you go for an on-premise solution, then there is clearly going to be an IT burden in terms of administration, backups, recovery, fault finding and so on. With on-premise solutions any issues can quickly become a point of contention between the software/system vendor and the IT service provider, especially when the IT service is outsourced. As a user of this technology, if you have a problem, that problem can ping pong between the two, offloading responsibility to the other about the cause. With an online or SAAS solution, it’s very easy to determine where a problem (and the responsibility to resolve) lies should something go wrong.
The cost. Let’s be honest, lots of these systems are prohibitively expensive, they can include annual licensing fees, maintenance fees, and many of them are inflexible. Once you are committed, then it can be difficult to change or move on to an alternative solution without a lot of effort. Enquiring about many of them can lead to pushy sales calls and misleading claims.
Complexity, some of these systems can be overly complex for the end users, if you have to train an employee extensively to use it, then it’s adding friction (and of course cost) between the employee and effective use of the information they need to know about. A system that is hard to use or navigate destroys enthusiasm.
We’d strongly recommend you consider only those solutions that offer you a free, and by that we mean completely free, trial for a period that’s long enough for you to decide if it’s right for you. Part of this trial should include support and training, as if you were a paying customer to get you up and running.
The website you are reading this on produces such a system and would be happy to offer a free, no obligation 30 day trial to qualifying organisations, without any hard sell or pushy calls.
What about SharePoint?
We can’t talk about documents, handbooks, and files without mentioning Microsoft SharePoint.
SharePoint, at least these days is typically bundled as part of a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, it’s a very capable platform that can be used to solve many problems, but it’s also true that it’s a platform upon which solutions to problems can be built as opposed to being a solution to a specific problem.
I’ve often heard it described as a solution looking for a problem, which is reasonably accurate in our opinion. Due to the way it’s bundled, it’s often perceived as cost free and so frequently used as a mechanism to fend off additional spend when HR, Quality Assurance, or any area outside of IT identify a need for an IT solution of one form or another.
“We have SharePoint, it can do this” – IT.
Whilst as we’ve already said it can solve many problems, in reality it solves little without a lot of work up front. That brings with it the need for additional skills, and typically that’s bespoke development and administration and/or expensive third party add-ons.
The cost of the additional development and add-ons usually far exceeds the cost of a solution dedicated to the problem you want to solve, and that’s before we even consider training times and costs. A quick search for SharePoint training should give you an idea.
You’ll also find that it’s often loathed by employees or end users who are forced to use it, at least outside of those that have any kind of responsibility for administering or developing on top of it. An internet search would also likely give you an idea of this.
In terms of a simple analogy, we’d liken SharePoint as being a set of car parts from a single manufacturer configured as a basic ‘vehicle’ out of the box, whereas dedicated software for a specific problem would be a car, a truck, or a tractor, designed with suitable components from any desired manufacturer.
Sure, you can add additional components and development to make it become the car or truck or even the tractor you need, but that will cost you more, and then you’ve built something that is entirely dependent on that platform and everything that happens with it.