Employee handbooks and guides are a great resource every company provides or should provide. They offer good insight into the expectations the company has for you as the employee as well as creates an accountability within the workplace. The problem with the guidelines in the handbook is getting your employees to follow them rather than having it used a disciplinary tool if/when someone crossed a line. The key is getting employees to read it, and give them time to look it over.
Sure this sounds simple enough, companies often attach the handbook or send it to newly hired employees while they are being OnBoarded; while this seems to be an efficient way to tackle this, it actually could bring up a couple of problems.
First thing is that most employees won’t read the company handbook on their own time, they would much rather spend their time doing other,
maybe more, engaging activities. Handbooks aren’t fun and engaging no matter how much you try to reinvent the wheel. Secondly, if the employee is an hourly hire and you are requesting them to read the handbook on their own time, this starts moving in to overtime territory especially if they are scheduled to work 40 hours a week. Now you can see, hopefully, where the problems can arise when trying to get your employees to familiarize themselves with the company’s handbook on their own time.
So what’s the best way to go about this? One of the most popular suggestions is to incorporate reviewing the company handbook and guidelines during the employees’ orientation. Carve out an hour or so to have a company leader go over the book with them, this way you know it is being read and reviewed and also during their worktime so you avoid any overtime pay. Also, this can be proactive educationally in that if the employee does have any questions, there is someone right there to answer it or help them out with understanding it. Most importantly you can rest assured that the necessary and important company policy and information is being reviewed properly and are being understood by your employees.
