The competition for top talent has always been a challenge, but with the recent “Great Resignation,” finding and keeping the right employee is more challenging than ever. There are endless directions your company could take to attract and retain talent, but having and sharing your company handbook will increase your company’s transparency.
Using Your Company Handbook In Hiring
I can hear you asking, what does my company handbook have to do with finding the right employee? The truth is, employees have choices — more choices than ever before. They want and, in some situations, are demanding more. Employers need to shake the misconception that employees are grateful to just have a job.
Enter your business. You offer more, you value your employees, you provide excellent benefits and pay, and current employees love your company culture. This is great news! It sounds like a lot of current job seekers would be interested in applying for your open position. But how do you communicate all of this information? You could put some of it in a job posting, and that would be a great idea, but you don’t want to make your job posting too long. You could discuss some of it during your interview, but you may run out of time to discuss everything. Enter your employee handbook!
The Perfect Job Offer
Your employee handbook can help you secure the talent you need to see growth and success within your business. When you are ready to make a job offer, send the candidate an email attaching both a formal job offer and a copy of your employee handbook. Call out a few important points in the handbook in your email or job offer, but invite the employee to review the handbook in its entirety before accepting the job.
When created properly, an employee handbook can give employees a clear understanding of a company’s true culture and how it treats its employees. Extending the handbook as part of the job offer shows that your company values transparency. It will also likely decrease those immediate employee turnovers (assuming your employee handbook is an honest depiction of how you run your business).
The Employee Journey
Even after the initial hiring process, employee handbooks are beneficial. They hold both the employer and employee accountable to a certain level of conduct. As an employer, your handbook allows you to have a standard guideline to point back to if an employee’s behavior ever falls outside your company values or expectations.
Keep Your Company Handbook Accessible
Start the employee journey by asking employees to sign the most recent version of your employee handbook. Keep an updated version somewhere where anyone on the team can easily access it. This will increase compliance and create a level of security because employees know what is expected of them and will know how to handle certain situations if harassment or discrimination ever becomes an issue within your company.
Update It Regularly
Keep in mind that you are not locking yourself into anything by publishing an employee handbook. You can add new policies and update or remove existing policies to offer better insight into company expectations or outline how the company plans to move forward. Be sure to communicate those changes to your employees and ask for updated signatures! In fact, you should set up a time to review your handbook annually to ensure all state and federal regulations are still being outlined properly.
Need help writing or updating your employee handbook? We can create a customized handbook that outlines your business’s vision, benefits, building amenities, employee conduct requirements, and state requirements.
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Heather Morrison
Heather is the VP of Operations at Innereactive and we are lucky to have her. She has over five years of experience running an HR department and enjoys helping businesses like yours find solutions to their HR needs.