Companies with dedicated human resources staff often have a lot more duties than interviewing applicants and processing incoming applications. Today’s HR employee often has a wide range of tasks to keep them busy and to help with the onboarding of incoming employees. Having a reliable employee handbook can be quite important for relaying critical information, keeping the company and employees accountable, and providing key resources so that new employees can not only survive the first few days and weeks of a job but also thrive and contribute meaningfully to the company.
An employee handbook, from the perspective of a new employee, shouldn’t feel overwhelming – they are often overwhelmed by the new environment to begin with. Nevertheless, it should contain crucial information but be conveyed in a way that is clear and concise. Here are a few tips on how to create a practical employee handbook:
The opening pages of your employee handbook should contain a concise introduction that clearly outlines the values of your company, along with its mission and vision. This sets the tone for what you expect of employees and what your company stands for.
The following pages should contain some of the most important information at a glance, such as contractual work hours, business trading hours, allotted break/lunch time, pay scales, pay periods, and so on. You can add further details later on, but make sure that all essential information is readily found near the beginning.
To make sure that employees understand the work culture and environment better, make sure to make clear your company policies for conduct and behaviour. In the inner body of the handbook, make sure that you’ve covered the essential bases like policies on individual behaviour, attendance, dress code, and so on.
This is also a good opportunity to introduce some of your company’s commitments to legal matters, such as policies on harassment and bullying, data confidentiality, use of technology, and more.
Employee benefits are a big draw for prospective applicants, and newly onboarded employees will surely be keen to discover in clear black and white what they can expect from your company.
Naturally, this depends on your company’s benefits package(s), but things like paid leave entitlements, paid time off, holiday times, remote/hybrid work policies, and emergency protocols are all important to add here.
As part of accountability between your company and your onboarded employees, it’s important to reserve a page within the handbook that contains an acknowledgement that must be signed off by both parties.
This ensures that employees consent to the contents of the handbook and to their contractual duties, so it’s important for trust between the employer and employee.
Well, of course, you’re going to want to print out your employee handbook at some point, so it makes sense to format it for printing. It’s perfectly fine to have a digital format (e.g. in PDF), but a physical copy is much easier to distribute and to have employees sign off, plus it can be printed in large quantities for future use.
When it comes time to format and print your employee handbook, make sure to print out a test sample first and to double-check it. At Print on Demand, you can collaborate with our friendly team to make sure that your employee handbooks look brilliant.
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