If your team is creating its first employee handbook, chances are you’ll start in a tool you already use every day. For many small or growing companies, that’s Google Docs. It’s free, familiar, and makes it easy to collaborate with managers or legal advisors without introducing new software. In those early stages, using Docs can feel like the simplest way to get your handbook project off the ground.

But here’s the catch: what works well for drafting and collecting input can quickly become clunky once your handbook needs to scale. Formatting gets messy, version control becomes confusing, and distributing a document to hundreds of employees isn’t as straightforward as hitting “share.”

We’re here to help. Let’s walk through the step-by-step process of creating an employee handbook in Google Docs, explore best practices to keep it professional and readable, and talk about when it makes sense to move beyond Docs into a more scalable, secure solution.