Sabrina

Welcome back to the HR Connection. My name is Sabrina Baker. I am the CEO and founder of Acacia HR Solutions. And in today's episode, Marie is forcing me to make an admission that I'm not sure I was ready to make, but we're going to go with it. Today we are talking about handbooks. We are going to go through our process. Again, this is part of our intentional HR series. It is not the funnest work. It is not the sexiest work, but it is the most necessary work. And so last episode was about audits. This one about handbooks. And what we're trying to do is build capacity. When you are in a 1 to 500, building capacity is really difficult. And so these are some of the ways that we have found to do that. If you're not subscribed, please do so now. And let's jump right into this episode. All right, Marie, you know that joke, is it a joke or a saying, I don't know, about how mechanics always have the most broken cars? They work on cars all day long, and their cars are often the ones that go the longest without oil changes and the longest without whatever. Well, I am not very proud to admit that that is us when it comes to something like an employee handbook. So we have policies. We have important policies, right? We do all of the required compliance things. We do our trainings, and we pay appropriately. And we, you know, I absolutely believe that we are compliant from a legal standpoint. But to say that I have a full handbook with all of the policies in it that I would want or need, we don't have that. And it's like one of those things that has been in my brain for a couple of years. And we've even talked about this because I was going to tap a generalist inside here to help me get one written. But my problem is this. If I'm really honest, I kind of hate handbooks. I kind of don't love that we need them. I don't love the way that they're done. They sound so informal sometimes. Or, you know, we've certainly have taken over clients that have had their handbooks written by lawyers. And so then it's just a bunch of legal jargon, which is great to keep them out of jail. But I want a handbook to feel like a living, breathing document that employees, not that they're going to want to read it, like, let's be real, I'm not expecting them to take it on vacation and feel like it's a great novel. But it's just something that can be helpful and something that can be useful. And so I have really struggled with that. And while it is on my goal list for this year to get us one, the reality is, as we go into this episode where you're going to talk about handbooks, that we don't have one. And I'm excited to hear what you're going to talk through today, because I know that we do a lot of handbook reviews in a year and a lot of revisions and a lot of trying to give our clients handbooks that feel like them. But yeah, the reality is we don't even have that. And so I'm as much of a listener in this episode as I am a participant.

Marie

I love that. This episode was pretty fun to write because of that exact thing, that exact reason. But as an avid handbook reader, I am probably one of the one in the world. I do appreciate the policies that we do have in place and how they do get updated every year. So I will give you a gold star for that one. But we'll go into it. So when we talk about, you know, the handbook that nobody reads, we're not just talking about employees here. You know, a lot of the time, the person who built it has also stopped going back to it as well. So because of that, you find handbooks that are out of date, or it doesn't quite reflect the company anymore. Or, you know, maybe every time it comes up, there's something more urgent to deal with first. So the handbook, it sits alone on a shelf or in your Google Drive. And nobody really says anything about it because nothing has visibly broken yet because of that. So that's what we're really going to get into today. So it's not just the employee side of this, but the HR side too. So, you know, how do you build something that's actually easy for you to maintain? And, you know, how do you build something that employees will open up when they need it, even if they haven't looked at it in a year? Now, I want to be upfront about something. And Sabrina already said this. And it is a fact that I have had to accept. But employees are not going to read the handbook cover to cover. And that is okay. It's really not the ultimate goal when creating a handbook anyways. In reality, the goal is that when something comes up, so like a question about your PTO policies, confusion around a process, or maybe even a situation with a coworker, employees can go and find what they need in the handbook without having to call you. And then you keep it current without it becoming a project you dread every time it comes up. So with that, we're going to cover why most handbooks stop working before anyone notices what a handbook is actually supposed to do, and how to build one that works for both you and your employees, and how to keep it alive year over year. We're also going to get into how we actually do this here at Acacia, including the part where we are in the middle of doing it for ourselves right now, which Sabrina already owned. So if you built the handbook, you sent it out, collected signatures, and have watched it sit untouched ever since, this episode is going to be for you. If you inherited something that technically exists, but doesn't really reflect the company you're working in right now, same thing, this episode is also going to be for you. And if you have just been putting this off because it keeps feeling bigger and bigger than it probably is, hopefully we're going to fix that for you today. Okay, so I'm going to paint a scene really fast. So the handbook gets built. It's distributed. It's signed. And then it just stops. Nobody updates it. Nobody references it. And because nothing is visibly breaking around us, no one's going to flag the lack of updating either. Instead, it just becomes one of those things that's technically handled. And I did little air quotes for technically right there. Your HR departments of one who built these handbooks usually figure things out first, right? You know what's in it. You know what's changed since it was written. And you know that when employees have questions, they're calling you or their manager versus actually opening that handbook. There are three reasons this tends to happen, and they usually show up together. The first is going to be tone. So the handbook sounds like a legal document instead of a company it belongs to, right? Employees are going to pick up on that tone very quickly. It doesn't feel like something that belongs to them. Instead, it just feels like something HR made them sign. The second is going to be training. So employees, they get a link or a PDF during onboarding to the handbook. They click acknowledge because they're just trying to get through their tasks. And then that was the end of it. Nobody walked them through what's in it or where to look when they actually have questions about the handbook or your policies. And then the third is going to be trust. So the handbook hasn't been updated since it, if, or I'm sorry, if the handbook hasn't been updated since it was created, employees figure that out very quickly. They check one thing, one fact about their PTO accrual. It doesn't match how things actually work. And they're just going to move on. And that handbook completely loses its credibility. And once the document is done, and it's not just because they're being difficult, it's because they learned it wasn't actually reliable. Now, all of these three things that I just mentioned, they are fixable. But not by making the document longer, right? A bigger version of something that isn't working is still something that isn't working.

 

Sabrina

I know that I have seen handbooks delivered to us for like 30 people firms that are 150 pages. Like, what on earth are you talking about in 150 pages? And nobody is looking at that. Nobody's reading it. So handbooks are interesting. As I said in the beginning, I don't love them. I don't love that we have to have them. But I know that we do. I know that we have to have them. And I know that they are a protection for the company. But also, they can be a great resource for employees. And as you were thinking, or not as you were thinking, as you were talking through everything that you were just saying, I realized we kind of have a handbook, but we have like these accumulated policies in different places. If I could just get them in one document, then voila, right? We have a handbook. But it still doesn't fix my issue of I just don't want it to sound so clinical. And I want it to bridge that gap of protecting us, but being a good resource for employees and being something that they feel like they can go and look at and get information. And that information is accurate. And that information sounds like us. And it feels like us because our brand of HR is different. We talk about that all the time. And so making sure that it really is something that is Acacia and not just pulled from the internet, pulled from a handbook builder, nothing wrong with those. But you still, I want it to sound like our company. So we have this accumulated handbook that's not necessarily together. It's like an accumulation of these policies. And I don't think that's necessarily a failure. But it is something that I think is important for people to, and for us, certainly, to get in one place and to make sure that it is this living, breathing thing that actually can be a resource.

Marie

Yes. Now, I want to keep talking about what the handbook is actually for. So we talked about three reasons why the handbook doesn't get used or goes unnoticed. So now let's talk about three real purposes of this document. Because most people treat the handbook like it is just primarily a legal document. And while legal protection is in there, it's not the floor. It's not the whole building, right? A handbook actually has three jobs. The first is going to be legal protection. So documenting compliance with the requirements that apply to your organization. Think anti-harassment, wage an hour, leave, worker classification. This is what protects you when something does actually go wrong. Informing employees on the basics of their employment is number two. So documenting information around pay periods, time off benefits, the things people actually want to know when they start a new job, and the things they come looking for six months in when something actually comes up. And then the third is process guidance. So giving the company a consistent way to handle requests and procedures. So, you know, managers aren't just improvising every time someone asks a question. Most accumulated handbooks do a partial job on the first one and skip the other two entirely. So what you end up with reads like a liability disclaimer. And nobody opens a liability disclaimer when they have a PTO question. When the second and third jobs are missing from the handbook, the gap gets filled by managers just trying to do their best and, you know, give support to their employees. However, the manager best guesses they aren't consistent. So you end up getting different answers depending on who you ask. And, you know, the handbook was supposed to solve exactly that. It just never got built the right way to actually do that.

 

Sabrina

Yeah, and I think maybe that's one of the most important points is that for us, you know, we're a very small team. And so we're all very connected and all very in each other's faces. And so I think this is why it hasn't been such a priority. But in a much larger organization where you have many managers, that inconsistency in how they handle things makes employees feel like they are working in three different companies inside the same company because you have one manager doing it this way, one manager doing it this way. And they all talk, right? All the employees talk. And they know that managers are doing things differently. And so I love to frame the idea of a handbook in that we're trying to make a very consistent workforce. We're trying to make sure that how time off is requested, how leaves of absence are requested, how PTO is handled, that that is how it is handled no matter who you report to, no matter what team you're on, department you're on. And I think that it's, of course, a legal liability and a risk mitigation there. But it's not just that. It really is about that consistency piece and making sure that you don't have employees who are frustrated because, A, things aren't handled the way that they say they should be in the handbook, or B, handled so inconsistently between one manager or one department to the next.

Marie

Okay, so let's talk about building a handbook that's actually easy to use. When I think about where to start, tone is going to be the thing most people skip because when you're just trying to get the document done, it feels kind of optional. But it's not. Tone really is what determines whether someone opens the handbook or avoids it. If the handbook doesn't actually sound like the company, it's going to just feel like something HR made people sign. And people will never go back to documents that feel that way. Now, this doesn't mean the handbook needs to be casual or funny. But it does mean that it has to sound like the humans who work there. So every policy, including the legally required ones, can be written in language that fits the organization. That's the whole job on the writing side. Order that actually serves employees. When we think about the structure of a handbook and how information is actually ordered, we need to place this information in an order that actually serves employees. So we like to have protection policy first, then pay, then time off, then benefits, and then leaves. That's the order someone reaches for the handbook in real life. So you really want to build it in the order that folks actually need information, not the order it was originally written. When we look at our guide to write a handbook, we try to order information through the employee lifecycle. Okay, next, outside of structure, you want to make sure that the information in the handbook is really easy to navigate. So you have a table of contents. This area is going to be clear. You're going to use plain language section headers, not like Section 4.2 compensation and remuneration policies. You're just going to have something simple that says pay. The person, you know, we think about the person who hasn't opened this document in 18 months. And they should be able to find what they need in two minutes without having to text you. That's the design goal. Next is the fact that you want your handbook to just be simple. So if you don't have a handbook yet, or if you have something that just needs to be completely, you know, tossed and start from scratch, start simple. So your handbook, you can have a short, accurate document that sounds like your company. And that's going to be more useful than a comprehensive one that reads like a template, right? You don't have to cover every single thing right now. You can build from it. You just want to have something that actually works at 30 pages because that completely beats something at 80 that nobody trusts. Now, if you built it and you know it's not being used, so now if you built the handbook and you know it's not being used, just take a beat. So before you blow it up and start over, figure out which one of those three problems you're actually dealing with. So is it tone? Is it structure? Or do you just have employees who are never shown how to actually use the handbook? The fix is different depending on the answer. And starting over isn't always the right call.

 

Sabrina

Yeah, so a couple of things that you said there that I think are really important. One, tone obviously is something that we are very adamant about when we are reviewing and working through handbooks for our clients. It's one of the reasons we don't use handbook builders. I know people ask us about those all the time. We don't use a handbook builder in our business because we want to be able to match the tone to the client. And certainly, you can download from a handbook builder and then go and change all the tone if you wanted to. But I just find those policies to be so clinical from a handbook builder, so legally sometimes, that if one exists that isn't like that, I haven't seen it. And so it's that tone piece that I think is missing when you're using those things. They're very efficient. And I understand why people love them. But for us, I want to be able to, if we had three clients doing handbooks at the same time, not one of them would read the same. They might be the same structure as you mentioned. They would be the same, you know, have the same table of contents and order. And they would be very simple in the way that they are laid out. And they would only have what we absolutely have to have in there based on the client, based on their industry, based on those things. But the tone of it would match our clients. And I think that's something that's important if you're going to want employees to actually read this. And not only that, but I think a handbook can be a great opportunity to reinforce your values. And so when we talk about your values, your behaviors, those behavioral standards that you want to have in your workplace, everything you do should reinforce that. The way you onboard, the way you manage performance, the way you pay people, everything you do should reinforce those values and those behavioral standards that you're trying to push. And so using that same language inside your handbook is a way to do that. It's such an easy way so that no matter where employees go, whether it's the values that are sitting on your website or inside of your handbook, they're hearing the same words. They're seeing the same language. And it's such a good way to be able to reinforce, especially in a small business where that vibe and that feeling is everything, it's such a good way to reinforce that.

Marie

Yes, 100%. Okay, so we just gave some really helpful tools around how to build a handbook that's easy to use. Let's talk about building a handbook that's easy to maintain. So when we think about a handbook nobody maintains, it's not just a document that becomes outdated. It actually becomes something employees quietly stop trusting, right? So employees, they checked it once. What they found didn't match how things actually work. And they moved on. And that's not an attitude problem here. That is just a rational response to an unreliable source. So keeping it current, it's not about perfection. It's about the signal. An updated handbook, it's going to tell employees that someone is paying attention, that leadership looked at this, checked it against where the company actually is, and then took the step to keep it current. That signal matters more than any single policy change. Now, you don't need a full rebuild of a handbook every single year. Instead, you just need to take a real look at what changed. So things like laws that may have been updated, benefits that might have shifted, processes that have evolved since the last version. When we think about the Acacia process around updating a handbook, I just want to be clear on that. We have an initial review with suggested changes. Client reviews are the client, they go back and they review what we've proposed. And then they accept or reject the changes. After that, there's a final pass for consistency and formatting. We have a cover memo that kind of writes out everything that we have worked on. And then there's dissemination with acknowledgment signatures. Now, written out and even me saying this out loud right now, I get that it probably sounds like a lot. But really, the review itself, the process that I just described, it really shouldn't take more than four hours. And that really is a reasonable commitment for something you're just doing once a year, right? Now, I did mention something like a cover memo. And you might not be familiar with that. In my experience, I find most people skip this part. But it is really important. And so the cover memo, again, this really is just a summary of what changed, right? So what new policies have been added, what's been updated, and then just note anything that's been removed and why. And then that cover memo, it just gets sent alongside the updated handbook. And this really does two things. The first, it tells employees what to pay attention to so they're not rereading the whole dang handbook that they didn't read in the first place. And then second, it signals that the handbook is alive, right? That someone looked at it, that it reflects where the company is. And really, that's going to be something that helps build trust. And it builds the habit of trusting the process and the handbook over time. Now, this last part is the acknowledgment signature. This isn't about bureaucracy. It's just documentation that employees were informed of current policies. It really does matter because the moment something goes wrong and someone says that they didn't know, it really can blow up into a much larger issue. So collect those signatures consistently. It really is one of the simplest protective measures you have.

 

Sabrina

All right, so once again, I'm just going to say, just like that mechanic with the broken down car, our handbook is definitely not where I want it to be. And it is ironic because we do run this process with clients many, many times a year. What would you say, five, six times a year for sure with any new clients? And then, yeah, we update current, we look, at least look at current clients once every year, right? Or every other year, something, certainly when there's new updates, which in California is all the time. But anyway, we run this process. We know it works. We know that it produces handbooks that are more referenced, that are more used than maybe others. And it's just something that I think we, I got to firm up here. It's something that I definitely, as I'm going through and listening to you talk about our process, I'm like, it's really not that hard. I don't know why we're not just, I don't know why I just don't have it done. But I always say, like, I need a generalist. All my team, all of our clients get a generalist. Where's mine? Who's my generalist? But anyway, if I think it's such a, just like, you know, our previous episode was about audits. And it's one of those things that it's not fun. It's not exciting. But you just have to do it. And you sit down and you go through it. And then once you've gone through it really once, and you've fixed your tone, and you've made sure that the structure makes sense, which the structure is my favorite part, by the way, because I do think that most handbooks, the way that they're laid out, make it very hard to follow or hard to find things. And I love that we followed the employee lifecycle. Like, that's always the way my brain worked when I did handbooks. It was always like, you do the employee lifecycle. Like, what are they going to hit as they're going through their employment? And those are the sections of your handbook that just makes total sense to me. And so we know that this process works. And you just sit down and you do it. And you get it done. And then from there, you should only have to update as laws change or as your policy changes, you know, just one quick review. But when you wait every three to four years, and you don't have an update, then that's when it gets to be this daunting process where every time you have to go and do the whole thing from scratch again.

Marie

Exactly. Okay, so I know that everyone is anticipating this last section here. So we've talked about how to build a handbook that's easy to use. We've talked about how to come up with a process to make it easy to maintain. So let's kind of talk about what it actually looks like to get employees to actually use the damn document. So when we think about that finish line, distribution, acknowledgment, you know, getting the signatures is not the same as making the handbook useful. Most organizations, they stop as signatures, right? The document, it goes out, everyone clicks acknowledge, and it goes in a folder somewhere until the next time someone asks where the handbook is. But three things actually change whether the employee uses it. One, employees are walked through it at onboarding, not just handed it or sent it, actually walked through it. This is five to 10 minutes explaining what's in there and where to find things when a question comes up. That's the whole investment. Managers, they should know what's in it. They're the front line for employee questions. And if they don't know what the handbook says, they're just going to give their best guess. If the managers do know, they're going to point people to it. That one shift is what teaches employees over time that the handbook is actually worth opening. And then third, it just lives somewhere where people can actually find it. So not buried in a sheer drive that nobody navigates and not attached to an onboarding email from two years ago. This needs to be somewhere employees know to look. Now, if you want to change how your organization actually uses the handbook and you don't have bandwidth for a big initiative, just start with your managers. This can be one conversation about what's in it and how to direct employees to it. Just this one little action really will do more than any company-wide email, I promise. I'm just going to say it one more time because it's really hard for me to accept. But employees are not going to read the handbook cover to cover. And that's not a failure here. The handbook, it was never meant to be read cover to cover. But really, the goal is that when something does come up, employees can use it and know where to find something that they need very quickly. So really, I'm telling you, just build for that and then maintain for that. Wherever you're starting from, something that accumulated over the years or something that you inherited, or maybe it's something that you've built and watched go unused, the bar for the handbook is not perfection. Instead, the bar that we need to set is building something useful and maintainable. And really, those really are achievable things.

Sabrina

All right, so all really good stuff. And again, I think just like the last episode about audits, you know, this is something very tactical. It's very granular, but it's very real. And this is how we get to building that intentional HR, is this is part of the back of the house that you have to get in order so that you can then build capacity inside yourself. Because then when managers are coming and asking you questions about PTO, about leaves of absence, about whatever, you can just point them to the handbook instead of having to answer them every single time. So this is one of those things that helps you build capacity. And it helps you build that credibility in the back of the house before you move on to the more strategic programs that you probably are dying to get to. If you absolutely do not have time, capacity, or desire to look through your handbook, you know it hasn't been updated in a few years. And if you're in a state like California, I would say even a year, it needs to be an annual at least review because of how often things change, just like minimum wage and new leaves added all the time. So if you're in one of the big employee-friendly states, California, New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, you really should be updating your handbook annually or reviewing it at a very minimum. If this is not something that you have any desire to do, but you know it needs to be done, this is something that we can do as a project. And as I said, we do five or six a year. Our generalist could probably recite handbooks at this point. They could probably recite certain policies and things off the top of their brain because this is something that they do quite often. And so we are available to help as a project for a handbook if that's something that you're interested in. If not, and you want to DIY this, you want to do it yourself, that's absolutely fantastic. And we have a resource for you on our website. And it is a review process. So it kind of goes through everything that we talked about today, everything Marie has laid out. And then it also has a templated table of contents. So as we were talking about the structure and how we take it, we take a handbook through the employee lifecycle. You can see the table of contents and the flow that we use. And we'll even move our clients' handbooks around to follow the structure because we think it's that important. You can find that linked on our website. And so the links to that will be in the show notes. And as always, there are lots of resources on our website. So while you're there, if you missed the audit episode last time and you want an audit checklist, that's out there. And there's lots of really good stuff. Marie is constantly updating that page with other resources for you. So please check it out. And you can subscribe to get exclusive downloads, so even bigger downloads. If you just share your email, then we'll give you access to really all of the resources that we have. From there, I think we are wrapped up for today. And I'm happy to be going through some of these processes that get us into a more intentional space, an intentional HR space. If you are not subscribed, please do so. If you're managing HR in a one to 500, this is the only podcast that speaks directly to you. And that is constantly bringing you content from a place of people who are also in the trenches inside of a one to 500. Marie, with that, I guess we'll see them next time.

Marie

We'll see you next time. Good luck on those handbooks.