If an extraterrestrial dropped in and asked you to describe your organization, would you hand him or her your employee handbook? Probably not. Your enterprise is about so much more than the benefits policies, cafeteria hours, dress codes and mission statements that are the core of most employee handbooks. Your organization's got a certain personality, a flair, right? People may dress down on Fridays, joke with each other in the hallways, and throw impromptu birthday parties.

Yet in most employee handbooks, you'd be hard pressed to find more than page after page about legalize or, as one person described their handbook, "a summary of what you can't do, to make sure you know what will get you fired." But the organization's handbook can be one of the welcome signs and initial motivators for employees, so shouldn't it say 'welcome' in the company's language, showing people why they might be motivated about being a part of the organization, and how they can work as well as what they should and shouldn't do?

Putting it in perspective

Most people can agree that employee handbooks are the norm, if not a necessity for every company. Policies, benefits, procedures, etc. are housed in this bible of the legal and HR departments. Without handbooks, employees might not have a clear idea of how things are done; they'd be resentful of unwritten company rules, and might rebel (or, times being what they are, sue) when a rule is imposed upon them. Employees and the organization suffers from the interpersonal and legal battles that often ensue from unclear expectations and a misunderstanding of organizational culture and norms.

Employees and organizations rely on handbooks to help make their relationship as valuable, productive and rewarding as possible. The solution is a simple equation: take the right information, make it easy to understand and enticing to read, and employees are more likely to put the ideas into action — or at least start from a place of greater clarity and understanding, which is a more solid foundation from which to excel.

Why it's important

The problem with handbooks is that most are incredibly boring, or read like a propaganda document that lacks credibility and is thus easily dismissed or scorned. (Honestly, have you read yours cover to cover?) By not including the organization's personality, or corporate culture, you're stripping away the means that will help employees learn and understand the policies, which will help improve business (isn't that the point?) and avoid legal issues (another good point). Here's why:

• The company culture might be one of the top reasons an employee decides to join your organization. Why hold this back in the book that represents the company?
• If the culture is working well for your organization, shouldn't it be reinforced in your employee materials, too?
• How credible is a mismatched corporate handbook and culture? They can't both be right. Which is an employee to believe? For example, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that an employer's published anti-nepotism policy was unenforceable. The company fired a brother and sister based on this policy; but because the company failed to enforce the policy for several years — even though several senior managers were aware of the brother-sister relationship — the court ruled that the employer's actions spoke louder than its words. This ruling cost the company $600,000.
• If you want employees to read and act on policies, provide the information in a manner they can easily understand. (Legal mumbo-jumbo may be interesting to the lawyers, but most other people will avoid reading it or miss the points obscured by the herewiths, heretofores and heretos!)

Here are ways to incorporate your company culture and make your handbook more interesting, more useful and more effective:

• Balance legality with clarity and effectiveness. You know the drill (and it's a necessity). The legal department or your hired legal counsel will chew through your handbook twenty times before it goes to print. And why shouldn't it? Your company handbook is a legal document designed in part to help the company steer clear of potential litigation, misunderstandings and poor performance from either side. It's reasonable to expect that the document needs to meet legal requirements.

Yet when you reflect your organizational culture in your handbook, the wording will be very different than the legalese once considered the norm for handbooks — and the language with which the lawyers are most comfortable, but which most other people (and, it seems, most lawyers, don't seem to make sense of). You'll have to build the lawyers' understanding of why certain language and layouts (which might seem unimportant to them) will actually help employees understand the policies and expectations more accurately, and therefore support their intention of reducing the possibility of future legal action. Make sure you present policies and the culture clearly and accurately; but don't succumb to the pressure to use fifty words where five will do. After all, if no one actually reads the document, it hurts rather than helps.

• Tell a story. Advertisements, history books, films, and even jokes tell a story. People like stories, because they resonate with our deeply held connections and archetypes. Through workshops and reading about the psychology of learning, we know that many people understand information more easily and have a higher rate of retention when they can link it to a story, scenario or metaphor. Make your employee handbook a good read by taking the time to include more than just the facts. Instead, make it a showcase of people doing the sorts of things that exemplify the organization's mission, goals, and cultural norms.

• Show while you tell. Not everyone can plow through pages and pages of straight copy. Heck, even the dictionary has pictures. Bow to the visual sense (and increase readership and retention) by including graphics that reflect the organization's personality. Based on our client work and the handbooks we've used and assisted clients with in the past, we know graphic elements that match your organizational personality go a long way to ease the eyes and create congruence between what's on paper, and what's in action. Graphics and "white space" in the layout help readers to more easily scan and absorb the information.

• Be brief, and use your culture to your advantage. Employees equate handbooks to phone books — they're better booster seats than reading material. Make sure you cover all necessary ground — and be thorough — but don't overdo it. Ask yourself, "Is this information pertinent to the handbook?" Look for ways to use your organizational culture to your advantage when developing the handbook. Is there another, more appropriate place employees regularly get this information?

• Highlight action steps. Be certain to tell employees what they need to do to comply with your policies or core values. A statement like: 'we treat customers with respect' doesn't mean very much. What specifically do you mean by respect? What does it look and sound like? Does this include employees who don't have direct contact with customers? Who do you consider your customers? You can see how quickly a policy or value statement can become devoid of meaning, and not something employees take seriously.

The first step in this process, of course, is to get a firm understanding of your culture (which is another article in and of itself), and discover how that can translate to the handbook. With that agreed, you'll be able to communicate more effectively with employees, ensuring message consistency in printed materials and actions. What better way to kick off the employer-employee relationship?

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