![How to Create an Employee Handbook [for SMEs and Growing Businesses]](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/602bb4fef9fa885b85f30bf7/6308a62ee911e77e1c1520a7_how%20to%20create%20an%20employee%20handbook%20waybook%20hero.png)
A powerful communication medium between the business owner and employees is significant for the success of the business adventure. An employee handbook is a resource guide that provides the company's information, policies, mission, vision, and procedures in document form. It gives employees an overview of their expectations from the company and their role in getting benefits from the startup.
So, as an employer, you might be thinking about how to create employee handbook to ensure an optimal onboarding experience. As a beginner, it might be challenging to design your first company handbook. This article provides you with essential tips to create a precise small business handbook. Let's discuss this in detail.
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Why do SMEs need Employee Handbook?
When you recruit new team members into your workforce, you need to make them acknowledge your company's operations. The employees must understand the rules and regulations to work proficiently in your business adventure. According to research, 87% of the small-sized businesses sized 10-200 employees use handbooks.
Handbook ensures Legal Compliance
The small business employee handbook plays a significant role in your company's legal compliance with state laws. The health, safety, disciplinary, and other HR employment law policies protect your business from legal matters.
It Organizes your Policies
When you initiate your small business venture, it is necessary to keep your workers aligned. Your main approach is to gain your desired outcomes. Right? So, make your employers understand the ins and outs of your policies and regulations. How can you do that? A handbook guide organizes all your company's policies that your workforce needs to abide by. So, a manual guide is essential for your startup's positive outcomes.
Serves as an onboarding tool
During the onboarding of new hires, the small business handbook is an effective tool to make them comfortable with the company. The dress code, project management plans, benefit offers, help, etc., listed in the guide, help the employees with the organization's culture, core values, and vision. It facilitates the newbies to familiarize themselves with the company's offer and allows them to set up their expectations from the management accordingly.
Boost productivity through Communication
Every business's success, whether it is large or small, depends on the productivity of its workforce. As the handbook contains all the essentials that the employees require to perform better in the organization, it helps to boost the productivity of the team. A small business employee handbook is a useful source of Communication that makes all the employees aware of the company operations and their duties. In this way, they perform efficiently in augmenting the organization's gains.
How to create Employee Handbook
You might be brainstorming how to create employee handbook. You can easily design your resource guide for your hires by sticking to the following fundamentals.
Main Components of Small business handbook
So, while creating your company's handbook, what are the key essentials you need to include in your document? Let's get into this.
Policies of Company
Writing about your organization's policies intrigues the employees. So, your handbook must include all your company's regulations. You may add flexible working hours, remote work opportunities, health and safety, anti-discrimination and harassment policies, etc. It is fascinating to include benefits to captivate the newbies. For this purpose, you can list insurance and other bonuses. According to the survey, 86% of the respondents have an employee handbook.
Culture of the Company
You need to outline your company's background and business goals and objectives. It helps you to familiarize the employees with your business history, vision, and mission. So, it is significant to list the company's culture to captivate news members into your workforce.
Enlist Organizational Processes
Your small business handbook template should contain all the processes you need to make your business stand out. For instance, you can list the appropriate actions you need to work efficiently in your workplace. For example, how often you schedule meetings or procedures to analyze your team's progress, etc.
Frequent Review of Employee Handbook
Regular revision of the handbook is essential to keep the document updated. As your business venture grows with time, the change in the processes is more evident. So, review your handbook frequently to ensure quality content meets current trends and needs. How can you make your small business handbook a living document? For this purpose, edit the document to add new policies and keep the document fresh.
Get Feedback and Apply Rinse-Repeat Formula
You should provide an automated handbook review facility to your employees to build a strong connection with them. Their feedback makes you aware of their good or bad experience with your small business employee handbook. So, this action assists you in making adequate modifications and boosts your business recognition.
For instance, if your employees are not satisfied with your resource guide, you can edit the policies or processes according to their preferences and needs. It escalates the chance to captivate more newbies. According to research, 69% of the employees believe that they work harder if valued through feedback. So, get feedback and apply a rinse-repeat formula to innovate and change the document to value the company.
Easier and Accessible to Everyone but Under Designated Ownership
Your company's handbook should be a collaborative result of all the expert team members. For instance, your product content creator should be responsible for writing in the product section, and an IT expert should handle the technology section of the handbook. So, the handbook should be easily accessible to everyone.
If you are a manager, you are responsible for designing the handbook as a whole. You need to get the right people for appropriate handbook points to add value to your document.
Take Legal Advice for Compliance
A piece of professional legal advice is essential to avoid legitimate issues. Writing a handbook might be tricky if you don't comply with the employment laws. So, how to take legal advice? For this purpose, you need to have a dedicated human resource team to get helpful guidance.
Legitimate counseling helps your company to be protected from legal repercussions. The professional team helps you to build and update the processes and policies of the organization to reflect the company's identity and operations productively.
Conclusion
In short, writing a small business handbook is a primary step to making your organization worthwhile.
In today's digital marketplace, you need to provide a resource guide that provides your employees with complete information regarding your company's culture, processes, and policies. It is an onboarding tool that captivates new hires toward your organization. For designing a precise handbook, you need to review it regularly and get feedback to improve or edit the documents.
You can take assistance from the Waybook tool to plan, create, organize, and update the employee handbook. Waybook is a one-stop shop for all your training, onboarding, and documentation needs.
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