Five suggestions for improving your employee handbooks.
I ran across this TED talk video that brought home the idea of revising my handbook.
After watching that video I ran across an excerpt from an E-book written by Joseph Watson. He suggested the following:
- Avoid unneeded words. Be critical of your own writing and make every word pull its own weight.
- Be mindful of your audience. You don’t want to “dumb down” your handbook to a highly educated audience, but you don’t want to talk over the head of employees either.
- Put action into your words. Too much business writing is written in a passive voice.
- Write to express and not to impress. Write like you talk.
- Try to tie into your readers experiences.
As a bonus last suggestion try to use a friendly tone. Although it may be important to remind people they are “at-will” (after all the lawyers say we do) we don’t have to pound it in every third paragraph.
Hope these help.
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