Shawnee Love   •
July 13, 2018

As a human resources consultant, I have written a lot of employee handbooks.  In fact, when I look back, the need for a handbook is probably the most common reason new clients have sought our help.

Those clients are looking for help setting the rules, explaining them, changing them, and sometimes just documenting them for future reference.

To me, an employee handbook is so much more than just the rules (more on that in a future blog), but this is an article about rules.

Over the years, I have formed some pretty strong opinions on what constitutes good employment policy.  My three “rules” for creating good rules follow:

1. Write rules for lay people,
2. Write rules which are easy for people to follow, and
3. Only write rules which everyone is expected to follow.

Write Policy For Lay People

By this I mean, write your policy in simple and clear language which is easy for your people to understand.  Employment policy is not a place to see herewiths and other legalese.  Also, minimize the jargon and acronyms because its often the new hires who are expected to read a handbook cover to cover and the jargon isn’t familiar to them yet.

Write Policy Which is Easy to Follow

Where possible, document what is already happening.  For example, if switching shifts has happened organically and fairly with employees making arrangements among themselves and presenting the plan to the boss, document that process.  Don’t rule out switching shifts or introduce a bureaucratic shift switching process because of one incident or difficult employee.

And on the topic of difficult employees, you will occasionally come across an employee who spends more time trying to break the rules than he does working. Don’t write policy for this guy either.  Instead, manage the troublemaker and write policy for the many people who are trying to do a good job and just want to know what the parameters are.

If you do have to create policy which is designed to change behaviour, e.g., when you learn better or safer ways of doing things, or when new laws are introduced, do everything you can to make it as easy for people to make the change.   I.e., explain the reasons for the new policy and the risks or consequences of acting in the old manner, and train people in the new process.  By the way, training doesn’t mean just handing out the policy.  It means providing a training session with real examples and the opportunity to explore the purpose of the policy as well as what compliance looks like as well as what results from non-compliance.

Write Policy Everyone Must Follow

This rule is a simple one in that everyone covered by the policy should be held accountable for following the rule.  If you aren’t going to enforce the rule, or certain individuals have hall passes on particular rules for no clear reason (e.g., employment status, role, etc.) then don’t write them.  Too often I see managers creating rules as a knee jerk reaction and then forgetting about them only to remember a year down the road. If you aren’t consistently following and enforcing your policies, you can’t expect to rely on them in the future.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Let us know.