An employee handbook covers everything from your company culture to day-to-day policies and information related to legal compliance. A good employee handbook reduces uncertainty, maintains consistency, and helps resolve conflict.

A table of contents makes your employee handbook easy to navigate. Even better, an electronic or digital employee handbook can include a table of contents with clickable links, making it even easier for employees to navigate to the specific information they need.

By the end of this article, you should know why you need a table of contents and how to create one.

Adding an acknowledgement statement in your employee handbook is not just a formality. It’s a safety net to document that your employees have received your handbook. Some acknowledgement statements go even further, asking employees for additional confirmation such as reading, understanding, or saying that they’ll comply with the policies included in the handbook.

But first, let’s understand the role of an employee handbook. It’s a fundamental document that helps you set expectations, guidelines, and policies for everyone in the company. Because your handbook is rich with content, it’s important to collect employee acknowledgement.

Here’s a guide to help you understand why you need an acknowledgement statement and how to make yours as effective as possible.

Imagine receiving a heartfelt message from the company CEO on your first day at a new job. When properly executed, this message has the power to make a strong first impression.

Employee handbooks introduce new hires (and reintroduce existing employees!) to your company culture, policies, and expectations. By integrating a personal message from the CEO, you can make everyone feel more welcome.

A CEO greeting communicates your company culture while showcasing leadership’s dedication. In this article, we’ll guide you through creating an effective CEO welcome message.

Imagine this: You’ve just been handed your employee handbook on your first day at a new job. As you begin flipping through the pages, you are met with dry, boring paragraphs of text. Are you inspired to read on, or do you feel overwhelmed?

Now, picture a different scenario: You’re given an employee handbook where the text is interspersed with images, infographics, and/or illustrations. The balance of text and visuals makes the content much more approachable.

Images can transform your employee handbook from an intimidating wall of text into a lively, engaging, and even enjoyable read. Visual elements don’t just make your handbook look good; they aid in comprehension, retention, and overall interaction with the document. When you emphasize design, you’ll make your employees feel how much they matter to your company.

We touch on images and design work in the “The Pep Work” section of our How to Write Policies & Procedures guide, but let’s dive a little deeper on adding images to your employee handbook.

Whether you’re an HR manager trying to breathe new life into your company’s policies or a business owner creating your first handbook, we’ve got you covered. In this article, we’ll talk about what an employee handbook is, the benefits of handbook templates, and factors to consider when choosing a template. 

We’ve compiled a list of basic employee handbook templates to help inspire your handbook creation process. Most of the templates we’ll feature are suitable for companies with fewer than 50 employees — people looking to create simple handbooks housed in Notion, ClickUp, another wiki tool, or in a Word doc or PDF. However, we’ll discuss some more advanced options, too.

We’ll also go over template customization and implementation, followed by best practices for handbook maintenance.

As a business owner or HR professional, you have many priorities, like hiring, training, and ensuring operations run smoothly. Your employee handbook can help you perform these tasks by giving employees easy access to the necessary information.

Employee handbooks give all employees clear guidance on your company’s policies, procedures, and expectations. Better yet, an effective employee handbook benefits people at all levels of your organization — from new hires on day one to managers celebrating ten years at the company.

In this article, we’ll explain what an employee handbook is, why it’s important to have one, and what it should include.

We’ll also discuss when to create your employee handbook and provide guidelines to help you get started.

Lastly, we’ll go over the various platforms you can use to create your employee handbook, including Microsoft Word, Google Docs, knowledge management platforms, or specialized employee handbook software like Blissbook.