How to Create an Effective and Engaging Employee Handbook

If you don’t know it yet, an employee handbook is a written document with information and guidance on a company’s history, mission, values, procedures, and processes. It will have detailed information on the company’s policies, roles, and responsibilities for employees.

Well-written employee handbooks will ensure company transparency, setting clear expectations for employees starting from the first day of the job down to retirement and resignation. It will also serve as a reference tool supporting employees during their time working in the company. It will also help with compliance and compliance training courses.

Here are a few tips on how you can create an effective and engaging employee handbook for the company.

1. Invest in an Employee Handbook Tool

Before anything else, it’s best to install a feature-rich employee handbook tool. There are many of these online, which can make it challenging to select just one tool.

When you’re choosing among different tools, you must make sure that the chosen software offers various templates, along with an online editor for content authoring, a publishing system, and an option to import and export your files. And lastly, your tool needs to have an enterprise-grade security system to ensure all critical information is kept confidential and that it integrates with third-party software.

After you choose and install the software, you can begin content creation and select a template.

2. Prepare an Employee Handbook Template

Templates are a good starting point when creating an employee handbook. If you already have a structure in mind, you must select a template best suiting the company’s requirements.

Templates would already have a predefined structure with a table of contents and placeholders. All you need to do is to add your company’s brand name, and logo, and fill your sections with relevant, valuable content.

3. Create Meaningful Content

Now, you can begin adding valuable info to the template. You can do this two ways, either by writing fresh content or uploading content you have to the document template.

If you’re starting off fresh and aren’t completely familiar with what employee handbooks include, these are crucial sections you should never miss out on:

• The company mission and vision
• Work culture details
• Employee perks and benefits
• Roles and responsibilities of various job roles
• Details about the company policies, promotions, and appraisals
• Information regarding learning and development programs, such as cybersecurity learning

You can add even more sections to the employee handbook, depending on your company and requirements. It should be comprehensive, ensuring you cover all the valuable information.

But remember, don’t overload your handbook and summarize the complicated topics in a few sections. You can also provide “read more” links to readers to more detailed documents. That way, you can keep the employee handbook light yet rich in information.

Remember, be as simple as possible and choose your words wisely, writing in a language that’s easily understandable.

Wrapping It Up

Follow these steps to craft an employee handbook your team will surely read and follow!