The importance of having up-to-date employment policies in place, a regular refresh schedule, and a look at what can go wrong if outdated information is the policy of record.
Did you read the title of this article and sigh? Or see the word policy and want to run for the hills?
You’re not alone, if so. Leaders and employees alike often have a negative or ambivalent feeling toward employee handbooks and company policies.
In our experience as human resources practitioners, there are typically several core reasons people think of “policy” as a useless or bad word. Let’s look at why.
Reason #1 The organization engages with an attorney to create an employee handbook that checks the box in terms of legality but is overly heavy in legalese and really doesn’t address the policies in practice. Practice is important because it translates the language into the day-to-day application for managers and employees. Ever skim through terms and conditions or a contract because of the overabundance of jargon? That’s what an employee handbook can feel like if it’s not tailored to the right audience.
Reason #2 The handbook or policy documents are WOEFULLY out-of-date. Without finger pointing, who out there has thought, “Well, our handbook was updated in 2013, so we’re covered?” Again, if you’ve thought this, you are not alone. Organizations change in micro and macro ways each year, and even more so within the span of five or six years. Chances are, your paid time off, leave, benefits, or hiring practices have changed in the last five years, so likewise, you must keep up with your employment policies and handbooks.
Reason #3 Managers don’t manage to the policies or practices as outlined in the employee handbook. Employment policies and employee handbooks can be powerful and unifying tools of governance, if written, communicated, and applied with good intent and consistent practice. If employees see a lack of respect for the policies from management, it does little to endear the policies to them.
Reason #4 Policy and practice is TOO detailed or not detailed enough. Are you scratching your head at this one? Isn’t it always better to include more detail? Not always. What we look to do when helping draft employment policies or handbooks is to create the right level of specificity for the organization.
So, what can go wrong if policy or handbook language is outdated, contains too little or too much detail, and/or doesn’t accurately reflect organizational practice? Here’s a real example from one of our human resources directors:
“At a previous employer, we got burned by not having an up-to-date policy around social media, email use, blogging, and messaging. Without going into identifiable detail, our electronic use policy focused on phone and fax use – so insanely outdated – not allowing us to enforce expectations around new technology and professional and personal interactions within the realm of social media. This caused a slow-down in how quickly we were able to move forward with conduct intervention and an eventual termination.”
Another example:
“We built what we expected to be an easy, if not super detailed, attendance policy that would allow us to apply discipline uniformly for unapproved absences. We did not, in fact, plan for the almost immediate ability of our employees to find “work arounds” in our language. You learn that lesson once! The more complicated you build a framework with points, occurrences, active periods for warnings, etc. the harder it is to manage in practice. We had to update our policy to give our supervisors the autonomy to manage based on a pattern of behavior than through points and warnings. With manager training and consistent guidance for new leaders, we’re managing attendance better than ever.”
So, what now? If you’ve identified that your organization needs to refresh your policies – either in a big way or through small tweaks, what is the best practice for this?
What we recommend:
- Partner with human resources experts (internally or externally if you don’t have a team or the bandwidth to take this project on!). Take an honest and complete look at what you have in place currently, including all employment policies and handbooks.
- Identify what needs to be updated and put a plan in place to execute the revisions. Think through this fully, including voice, audience, how the updates will be received by current and new employees, the policy language and expected practice, etc.
- Review revisions with key stakeholders to ensure adoption across the organization. You don’t want to create change in an absolute vacuum!
- Build a comprehensive communication plan across all levels of the organization. Make sure everyone has ready access to review for sign-off upon rollout and again when questions arise.
- Consider open forums where discussions are encouraged if major changes are made in areas where employees frequently have questions.
- Maintain an annual policy review/revision process and issue addendums as needed.
As human resources professionals, we look at policies and handbooks as living, breathing documents that change as the organization does – they should be more than just a check in the box every three to five years. By making updates at least annually, you can avoid the traps of out-of-date policies.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, we’d love to talk to you. Contact us today!
