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As an HR leader, creating an employee handbook is a critical task that sets the tone for an organization’s policies and expectations. However, it’s not uncommon for HR leaders to make mistakes that can have serious repercussions, ranging from legal liabilities to employee dissatisfaction.
To help you avoid these pitfalls and create a successful employee handbook, 15 Forbes Human Resources Council members compiled a list of common mistakes that HR leaders often make and best practices to correct or avoid them. Follow their advice to ensure your handbook is legally sound and crystal clear for your organization’s employees.
1. Using Too Much Legal Jargon
HR Leaders should not get bogged down by the legal jargon that can make a handbook overly long and hard to understand. Instead, reflect your culture in the handbook and ensure that tone is used throughout. Also, your handbook should provide direction for your team members that want to thrive at your organization and not solve for the 1% that will try to hack your policies. – Jessica Adams, Brad’s Deals
2. Creating Rigid Policies
HR leaders can make very rigid policies. This can be great for consistency, answering employee questions and training managers. But it might not leave room to do the right thing when a situation you had not thought of arises. Some policies need to be very rigid, but many do not need to be. You can have general guidelines to follow that leave room for those unanticipated situations. – Amy Casciotti, TechSmith Corporation
3. Making One Handbook For All Employees
I feel like when employers create handbooks, they directly relate them to hourly associates when in fact all companies have hourly and salary employees who both have different benefits and more. I always like to create two separate handbooks, one for hourly associates addressing all of the benefits that are available for them and a separate handbook for salaried associates addressing their benefits. – Melissa Bolton, Precision Walls Inc.
4. Writing In Formal, Cold Language
I just polled the Forbes HR Council on this very topic! I learned from my very bright colleagues that tone matters a lot. Handbooks are necessarily firm documents designed to inform. But don’t emphasize formal, cold language at the expense of a positive user experience. Consider how to add warmth and enthusiasm into your handbook, and make it a more accurate depiction of your culture. – Rick Rittmaster, CorTalent
Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
5. Making The Handbook Unapproachable
The biggest mistake that HR leaders make when creating the employee handbook is not making it approachable. It needs to be a digestible document for all employees to understand the policy, procedures, protections and culture that is their company. HR leaders should also make sure to host training opportunities to share the handbook with employees to encourage transparency and questions from all. – Jessica Wallen, Wurl, LLC
6. Following A Template
Don’t just follow a template. This can be a quick and easy solution for creating or editing a handbook, but ensuring that it is personalized to fit your organization’s culture and vision is important. We add a page that is a message from our co-founders about the history of the company and our vision. Customize it for your company and use language that your staff will understand. – Erin ImHof, CertiK
7. Having One Unchanging Handbook
Companies, cultures and the market change. Employee handbooks must be regularly (i.e., every six to 12 months) refreshed and reviewed. Having a static, non-changing employee handbook is the core mistake HR and admin teams do. – Nick Frey, Avomind
8. Trying To Borrow Content
Without question, the most common error is downloading a handbook from the internet and branding it for your organization. A handbook needs to cover so many details specific to your organization that it must be drafted by an expert and consider culture, industry-specific materials, applicable laws and more. – Lisa Shuster, iHire
9. Not Involving Employees In The Process
HR leaders should involve employees in the development of the employee handbook, asking for their feedback and input to ensure it is relevant and applicable to all members of the organization. They should also plan to regularly review and update the handbook so that it remains current and accurate, and that the handbook reflects the changing needs and priorities of the company and the employees. – Laura Spawn, Virtual Vocations, Inc.
10. Failing To Review Material Annually
The best practice is to update the handbook with new policies on a continuous/monthly basis. This will allow you to continuously update the handbook when new policies are updated and would lessen the burden of an annual or multiyear review and update. – Omar Alhadi, Adobe Care and Wellness
11. Lacking Creativity In The Process
One significant factor HR leaders often lack is creativity, which makes content (procedures and policies), collaboration and communication even harder to present and be accepted by employees while creating a handbook. Some practices are storytelling instead of dictating, using graphics instead of long text, paying attention to tone and usage of words and, most importantly, co-creating and socializing policies beforehand – Raj Tanwar, ADVANTAGE CLUB TECHNOLOGIES PRIVATE LIMITED
12. Putting All Information Into The Handbook
Oftentimes, HR leaders make the mistake of making the employee handbook too robust, in that in addition to policies and procedures, it also lists benefits and perks. As a best practice, we have created a culture book for employees. It serves as a road map, listing items, everyday processes and procedures, organization charts and career pathing guides, as well as hot spots around the city. – Domonique Revere, Ph.D., Adjaye Associates
13. Producing A Handbook That Doesn’t Align With Company Culture
Incorporating policies that do not align with the culture promoted within the company. The employee handbook should reinforce company culture. HR leaders should review handbooks through the lens of how the policies within them support or do not support that culture. Any areas of misalignment should be addressed immediately. Incongruencies can have a major impact on organizational health. – Raven Lee, Scientific Games
14. Including Too Many Policies
HR can often lose the balance between enabling and policing the business. Some policies make sense and are needed, but often guidelines or tips on how to navigate situations hit the mark. If you’re going to have a handbook, you need to make it accessible—not an exhaustive list of policies for every situation that no one reads. – Nathan Peirson, Paycor
15. Printing Copies Of Your Handbook
The main mistake is offering printed versions of the handbook. This can create outdated resources for associates. I now offer all handbooks in our HRIS. This gives us the opportunity to update the handbook in real time. – Ryan Tofte, BioPlus Specialty Pharmacy, A Carelon Company
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