While work flexibility definitely has its perks, uncertainty and frequent workplace changes are a major concern for employees. According to PwC’s Global Hope and Fear Survey, over 50% of employees feel that workplace shifts are happening very frequently. In fact, 44% of employees are unsure about the changes.
These frequent changes cause undue pressure on employees and may lead to job insecurity. But how can you resolve this? An excellent way to ensure consistency and standardize processes is to create an employee handbook that acts as a single source of truth. It helps employees understand what’s expected of them.
In this article, I will guide you how to create an employee handbook from scratch. I will also explain how to easily create employee handbooks with Venngage’s Employee Handbook Creator and share engaging Employee Handbook Templates.
Click to jump ahead:
- Understanding the employee handbook
- How to create a good employee handbook?
- Legal considerations
- Importance of employee engagement
- Employee handbook 5 best practices
- Employee handbook templates for small businesses
- Conclusion: Create engaging employee handbooks with Venngage
Understanding the employee handbook
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s understand the meaning, purpose, and importance of an employee handbook.
What is an employee handbook?
An employee handbook is a comprehensive document or manual that provides policies and procedures for ensuring employee conduct, enforcing workplace rights, and upholding company values.
Think of an employee handbook as a bible that lays down the fundamental principles of how your organization will function. It sets the standards, expectations, and policies that your employees need to adhere to.
An employee handbook comprises:
- Company overview: This section describes the organization’s history, values, mission, vision, and organizational structure.
- Employment policies: It includes leave policy, employment safety policy, social media policy, disciplinary policy, performance management policy, etc.
- Workplace conduct guidelines: This section explains dress code for employees, meeting etiquettes and workplace ethics.
- Compensation and benefits: Here, you’ll explain employment benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, wellness programs, etc.
- Technology usage: Here, you have to lay down guidelines for the use of company property and equipment by employees, Internet and email usage policy and cybersecurity and data protection to prevent identity theft and fraud.
- Training and development: In this section, you will explain the process and initiatives for employee training and development to support their career goals.
- Legal compliance: This section talks about the laws the employees need to follow and their rights under various laws, such as intellectual property rights, anti-bribery laws, employee rights under Family and Medical Leave (FMLA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
What is the purpose of an employee handbook?
Imagine sitting down to play a game of Monopoly for the first time, but none of the players have the rulebook. Nobody knows how to buy properties, handle money, or deal with the various game pieces and actions.
Chances are everyone will make mistakes, follow their own strategies and might even get penalized. Ultimately, everyone will be confused and irritated, not knowing how to progress.
That’s exactly what happens in the workplace with employees if they don’t have an employee handbook. They struggle to understand their roles, are unaware of their rights, make mistakes, and everybody’s confused.
With an employee handbook, employees are aware of how the organization functions, how they can align to company values and goals, what’s expected of them, and the legal do’s and don’ts.
Therefore, the purpose of an employee handbook is to provide direction to the employees, help them navigate workplace requirements and challenges, and enable them to understand and enforce their workplace rights.
Key objectives of an employee handbook
Now, let’s see why you need an employee handbook for your organization:
- Establishing expectations and guidelines: An employee handbook sets standard guidelines for ensuring employee performance, eliminating bias in the workplace and promoting a healthy work environment.
- Providing information and resources: It acts as a single source of truth and provides employees accurate information about the company’s values and policies.
- Ensure smooth employee onboarding: Employee handbooks are essential for smooth onboarding. They reduce the learning curve by providing information about company values, policies and benefits.
Importance of an employee handbook
A well-written employee handbook increases employee satisfaction. It also lays down detailed procedures for smooth conflict resolution. Plus, an employee handbook tells employees and managers how to manage and mitigate risks, thus enhancing accountability.
How to create a good employee handbook?
Here is the step-by-step process to create a good employee handbook:
1. Define the purpose
The first step to drafting a company handbook is defining the ‘why’ behind it. Figure out what purpose you want to solve with it and use that as a starting point. The purpose could be:
- Ensuring consistency in how managers and supervisors handle common workplace situations.
- Serving as a key resource for onboarding new employees.
- Engaging employees by clearly communicating the company’s benefits, rewards and professional development opportunities.
- Providing employees with a clear understanding of company policies, procedures, and expectations regarding their conduct, performance and workplace behavior.
2. Conduct research
Now the most important step is to conduct research for the employee handbook to ensure compliance with laws and address employees challenges and concerns. Here are a few ways to conduct in-depth research:
- Consult legal experts and review government resources to gain information about the latest laws applicable to your organization.
- Review your existing company policies to identify gaps and areas of improvement.
- Speak to managers and employees to understand their concerns and seek inputs from them for improving processes.
- Conduct a competitor analysis to understand industry standards for policies.
3. Create a structure
Now it’s time to get started with actual handbook drafting. Begin by creating a structure or outline to ensure a better flow of information. Here is a simple structure you can follow:
- Introduction: Introduce the company culture. Talk about the company’s mission and vision and how the company is committed to promoting a positive work environment.
- Company basics: Next, give an overview of the company’s work hours, compensation and benefits.
- Code of conduct: In this section, you have to outline guidelines for employee behavior in the workplace. Share examples of healthy interaction with colleagues and clients. Also mention consequences for misconduct, such as suspension or termination.
- Legal policies: Add policies related to relevant laws and regulations, such as labor laws, anti-discrimination policies and workplace safety standards
- Employee onboarding: Provide a step-by-step guide to the onboarding process, including documentation requirements, orientation schedules, and introductory training sessions.
- Safety and emergencies: Lay down a clear and effective procedure for handling emergencies, including evacuation plans, emergency contact information and protocols for reporting incidents.
- Grievance procedures: Next, outline the process for employees to raise and resolve grievances, ensuring employees understand their rights. This promotes a culture of trust and fairness.
- Employee development: Provide plans for employee training and development, performance reviews and career advancement opportunities.
- Employee acknowledgment: Also add a signed page for employees to confirm that they have read and understood the policies.
- Additional sections: You can also add additional sections on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), employee assistance programs (EAPs), sustainability and company values.
Think of the structure as the ‘Table of Contents.’ Create a skeleton of everything you want in your employee handbook. Something like this:
4. Draft the handbook
Once you have the structure ready, it’s time to draft the policy. Get inputs from your team and stakeholders and create policies based on your business’ requirements.
There are two ways to do this:
- Create a document from scratch
- Edit a pre-designed employee handbook template
5. Seek feedback
Is the first draft ready? Share it with the stakeholders, including the legal team, IT team and employees to seek feedback on the areas where you can improve. Give them a clear deadline and explain the process for sharing their remarks.
6. Finalize and share the employee handbook
Once you’ve received the inputs from your team, incorporate the feedback, finalize the employee handbook and share it with your design team to ensure a proper visual layout.
Also ensure that the writing style is simple, engaging and clear so that employees can understand the policies easily.
Moreover, since industry standards, trends, and laws are constantly changing, you should update the handbook regularly to reflect changes in company policies, laws, and regulations.
How to create an employee handbook using Venngage?
Creating an employee handbook is a herculean task. The good thing is that Venngage simplifies this process. It is a powerful design solution for business communications that build a healthy work culture.
With Venngage’s Employee Handbook Creator, you can create an engaging employee handbook in just five steps.
1. Sign up for Venngage
If you are already a Venngage user, simply log in to get started. However, if you haven’t used Venngage before, you need to sign up on Venngage to access our employee handbook templates.
2. Pick an employee handbook template
Once you have signed up, go to our template library and pick a suitable employee handbook template based on your preference and needs.
I have picked the Illustration Employee Handbook Template.
3. Customize the template
Now start customizing the template. With Venngage’s drag-and-drop editor, you can easily add icons and text to the design. You can also change the colors, font, visuals and icons easily.
Tailor the color scheme, fonts, and images to suit your preferences and requirements. You can further customize the template by incorporating extra sections, tables, charts, or icons.
4. Elevate your handbook
Enhance the handbook by tailoring the design as per your company’s brand guidelines. Venngage’s My BrandKit feature helps you add your brand logo, color palette, and preferred fonts easily across the employee handbook.
5. Print, download or share your employee handbook
You can simply share the design link with your team members to collaborate or get feedback. Once the design is finalized, click on Download and save the handbook as a PDF. Now you can print it and share a digital copy with your employees.
Legal considerations
Compliance
When drafting an employee handbook, compliance is the most critical factor to consider. Set necessary policies and guidelines to ensure adherence to all necessary employment laws. This helps avoid any potential lawsuits due to unfair employment practices.
Consult legal experts
It’s better to seek legal counsel to understand and implement employment laws. Consult legal experts who have experience in handling HR-related policies and issues to get guidance on complex issues like harassment, discrimination, and wage and hour laws
Check applicable laws
You should also thoroughly check the employment laws applicable to your business and jurisdiction. Check industry specific laws and regulations as well. Here are some of the common U.S. employment laws you must adhere to:
- Fair Labor Standards Act for fair wages and overtime.
- Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act to ensure workplace safety and health.
- Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) for pension benefits.
Importance of employee engagement
The problem with many employee handbooks is that they don’t focus on actual concerns. This is what Kate Bischoff, an attorney and HR consultant says:
A lot of companies focus on the irrelevant stuff and fail to address actual employee challenges. You need to create employee policies from the lens of an employee. Of course, you can do your own research, but who better to tell you about the employee challenges than the employees themselves? That’s why it’s so important to include employees in the handbook-building process.
You can seek real-time insights into employee challenges and create effective policies to address those challenges. Conducting detailed surveys can help here.
You can use Venngage’s Employee Survey Template to gain detailed insights from employees.
Distribute the employee handbook
Once your employee handbook is complete, the next step is effectively distributing it to employees. Here are a few ways to do it:
- Send it via email
- Share it on Slack channels, Microsoft Teams or any other employee communication channels
- Print the employee handbook or create a summary and post in common workspace areas
- Share the handbook with new employees in their orientation session
It’s also important to communicate any changes to the employee handbook or policies to your team. You can roll out a biweekly or monthly newsletter to inform employees about the changes in policies.
Try this simple template to help you communicate policy changes better.
Accessibility
Another crucial aspect to consider for employee handbooks is accessibility. You need to ensure that the digital as well as physical copies of the handbook are accessible to all employees.
You can use Venngage’s Accessibility Checker tools to create accessible designs. The Accessible Color Palette Generator helps you add color combinations that are easy to read for people with visual impairments. It also ensures that you follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Even the color blind stimulator helps you analyze how the handbook appears to people with visual impairments. Ensuring accessibility promotes a healthy work environment and builds a culture of trust, helping you retain quality talent.
Employee handbook 5 best practices
1. Tailoring
Don’t just simply copy paste text from the Internet or use standard employee handbook templates. Your employee handbook should be tailored as per your business needs, organizational culture, specific industry and company values. This helps employees understand and relate to the policies better.
Let’s say your organization is a booming startup in the tech space. You could add an employee policy on balancing risk taking and innovative thinking.
2. Regular Updates
Many times, a relevant policy or important guidelines are buried in the fine print, making it difficult for employees to read and understand the text. Hence, you should regularly update your employee handbook to remove outdated or redundant information and keep data that provides value to your employees.
Block specific time on your calendar every month or once in two months to update the employee handbook. Check for legal and compliance updates and change in industry trends or requirements. Ensure that the updated guidelines are aligned with business objectives.
3. Employee Training
Employee handbooks often have technical and legal processes or requirements that your team might not understand. It’s important to conduct orientation sessions and regular training sessions for employees to explain the contents of the employee handbook. Employee training is also important for sensitive matters to promote a healthy and positive workspace environment.
For instance, you can conduct a training for the workplace harassment policy, explaining to employees that sometimes seemingly harmless behavior can lead to workplace harassment. Teach them what actions would be considered workplace harassment and how employees can report workplace harassment cases.
4. Acknowledgment
You’ve shared the employee handbook with your employees but how do you know that they’ve read them? You need to outline a process for employees to acknowledge receipt and understanding of the handbook as proof that you’ve explained the policies to employees.
It also gives you the reassurance that your employees will adhere to the guidelines. Here are a few ways you can get acknowledgement from employees:
- For digital handbooks, you can add an acknowledgment form in the end where employees can do their digital signatures.
- Ask employees to send acknowledgement over email.
- For physical handbooks, you can attach a form and get physical signatures from employees at the time of onboarding
5. Make it engaging
Imagine putting in so much effort for preparing an employee handbook—creating multiple drafts, sharing them with the relevant shareholders, finalizing all inputs, only to prepare a lengthy document which employees might not even read or understand completely.
So, it’s important to create engaging employee handbooks with simple fonts and colors, icons, and visuals, such as charts and images. This makes the handbook easy to read and provides information in a crisp and concise manner.
Let’s say you are a creative media agency and you have to create an employee handbook. You can consider this template I found online.
It tells employees in simple and clear language about the items prohibited in the workplace but it’s text heavy and can be difficult to read.
Now, consider this Employee Handbook Template for Small Businesses by Venngage:
This one also tells employees about the prohibited items in the workplace but the visualization makes it so much easier to read and understand. And if you are a creative media agency, the second template will be more suitable for your organization culture.
Employee handbook templates for small businesses
Creating an employee handbook from scratch is a tedious process. You need to note down the requirements and guidelines, arrange the sections, draft the policy and share with the design team to make it visually appealing.
Following the entire process explained above will take you around 6-8 weeks to create the final employee handbook, give or take. The lengthy process is still fine but the major challenge is making the employee handbook engaging. A PDF with several pages and black and white text throughout might not interest your employees.
Instead, you can use visually appealing employee handbook templates to make it easier for your employees to understand the policies and guidelines. Let me show you some interesting employee handbook examples.
1. Illustrative Company Employee Handbook Template
If you have a fun and creative office culture, you will love this employee handbook. The vibrant colors and drawings make the handbook interactive, enhancing employee engagement.
2. Visual Employee Handbook Design Template
Here is another employee handbook template you can use if you have a lean team and a chill office culture. It has dedicated pages/sections to add different policies. You can easily customize the background, icons, font size and font color.
3. Free Employee Handbook Template For Small Business
Next up is the Free Employee Handbook Template For Small Business. It has a neutral layout for a professional look. The separate sections make it easier for you to classify information. You can even edit the visuals to add office images or charts.
4. Minimalist Agency Employee Handbook Template
If you want to keep your employee handbook simple and still make an impact, the Minimalist Agency Employee Handbook Template can be a good start.
It has a simple and professional gray background for a formal work culture. You can customize it by modifying the text as per your needs, adding or replacing icons and inserting images.
Conclusion: Create engaging employee handbooks with Venngage
An employee handbook is necessary for you to steer your organization in the right direction. It helps employees understand what’s expected of them, how they should perform, what actions are allowed in the workplace and what benefits and rights they have.
However, creating an employee handbook from scratch takes a lot of time and effort. Instead, you can get started with pre-designed templates to create an effective employee handbook. With Vengage’s customizable employee handbook templates, you can create engaging and user-friendly templates.
