When you onboard new employees, one of the first items on your onboarding checklist will probably include sharing the employee handbook. This is because the handbook contains all the vital information that the newcomer needs in order to properly integrate into the company.
Naturally, you would expect the new hire to jump on the first opportunity to learn all about your company, their role, and the systems in place. Shockingly, this isn’t always the case.
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A survey that was handed out to over 600 employers in 2020 found the following:
An estimated 60% of employees avoid reading their company handbook.
According to the survey, 57% employers also found it challenging to train managers so that they can enforce reading the handbook.
What does that mean for the business itself? If many new employees avoid reading their company handbook, or if managers fail to enforce reading the handbook, then the company will witness inefficient output, a decrease in productivity levels, and lots of general confusion amongst the newcomers.
So what could the HR manager and team do to avoid this unfavorable situation? Here are a few tips to ensure that your handbook gets read by newcomers.
Divide and sort the handbook into different sections
You don’t want your new employee to frantically search through a physical handbook for the most important parts to read. This will discourage them and make them more likely to ditch the reading all together.
Waybook enables you to arrange your documents so that only the relevant pieces of information appear to particular employees. These documents can then be sorted so that what needs to be read first appears at the top of the list.
Monitor the progress of the new hire as they read the essential documents
This part may seem almost impossible with physical handbooks, which is why our online handbook platform can make it a lot easier for you. You will be able to see the percentage of completion of each section as the employee moves through the required readings.
Test them on their knowledge to ensure that they’re doing the readings
The tests can be in the form of a simple multiple choice question after each section, which is made possible by Waybook.
Incentivize reading
This last tip is a good way to highlight your awesome company culture to the newcomers.
Rather than have the new hires read and digest all this new information simply because they have to, you could easily make the whole process a lot more fun and engaging by giving them incentives.
For example, the first new hire to finish reading and completing the quizzes of the handbook, gets a goodie bag. Or a coupon at a partner’s store. Or an honorable mention in the morning emails. Anything could work.
You do not need to fall victim to this statistic
Hopefully these tips will help your organization with effectively getting newcomers to read the company handbook. Ultimately, doing so will help you achieve success in the workplace through increased productivity and consistent output.
