Can We Make The Employee Handbook Ever Be Relevant?

Yea, but it does require a certain type of person to care.

We’re going to talk a little bit about the employee handbook in this post. You know, the good ol’ employee handbook: you get it during on-boarding, you never really look at it, and two years later you find it in some drawer when you’re cleaning your desk or house. That’s how most people intersect with the employee handbook, but the whole deal could be a lot better.

I guess it would be helpful to begin with two basic realities here. First, the employee handbook is deeply tied to on-boarding. That’s when you receive it at most jobs. Unfortunately, on-boarding is largely a train wreck at most companies — probably in large part because it’s owned by HR, and no “true business people” give a crap about HR. The biggest problem with most on-boarding deals is that they’re wholly transactional. This is your first day at a company, which is a big deal in your life. Instead of playing to that big deal, it’s mostly about email addresses, forms, and quick one-off meetings. The employee handbook is a part of that. It’s typically transactional and not transformative.

Now, the other issue is that for most people, an employee handbook is a cover your ass move. It lists stuff you can and cannot do, so you peruse it to make sure…