How to Write Policies & Procedures
5: The Pep Work
Designing Your Policies and Handbook
Now Comes The Fun Part. Hip-Hip-Hooray!
You’ve put in all the hard work developing your policies and procedures content. Now you can focus on making your handbook look and feel as much a part of your company as the employees who show up every day because they believe in your mission. By focusing on design, you’ll make your employees feel how much they matter to your company. Good, easy-to-digest design also shows potential judges or jurors just how important your company policies are and how you’ve done everything you could to make it as easy as possible for an employee to read and understand them.
Case Study: Utilizing Your Marketing Department
Chanin saw the importance of communicating the company brand to prospective employees because low unemployment was making companies more competitive. She enlisted the help of their marketing department so the company could be more appealing to applicants within the highly competitive Fintech industry.
Chanin Christensen
SVP / HR Manager at Merrick Bank
This is when the earlier goodwill you earned from your marketing team can pay off, particularly if they’re already prepared to support the project.
Here are a few ways you can work with them:
- Engage your designers and challenge them to find creative ways to break up blocks of text.
- Ask them to find ways to communicate visually to replace copy.
- Have them identify text they don’t understand or find boring.
- Ask for suggestions on how to make your policies better. They are supporters, not critics; their specialized input can take your handbook to the next level.
If you had the help of one of their copywriters during the drafting phase, great. If not, see if you can get help now to build a better narrative that takes readers from your culture to your policies. A copywriter can also provide suggestions on headlines that reflect your company’s personality while grabbing the reader’s attention. You don’t need to rewrite all of your policies – in most cases, sprucing up the introductions is enough. A little pep goes a long way.
The design phase is where you can take a step back from hard work of protecting the company and supporting employees. Now the focus shifts to how employees experience your policies. While you continue to navigate and negotiate your way through the remaining content approvals, have your designers and writers make your handbook easy on the eyes.
If you’re using a policy management platform or software provider to host and distribute your handbook, ask for help with design and copywriting. If they’re like Blissbook, they’ll be able to provide this as a service. Because they focus on these projects all the time, they’ll be able to go faster than your marketing department (think 3 weeks instead of 3 months).
Be a Handbook Superhero.
Blissbook is everything you need to create, distribute, and maintain an online employee handbook.
Request a DemoA Couple Photo Note-Ohs
If you choose to use photos of your employees, get a photo release from each person. You don’t want to be forced to review and update your handbook every time an employee leaves the company.
Although custom photography is a great way to connect with your audience, we know this might not always be in the budget. In that case, there are some great free stock photography options out there:
As they say, a well-placed picture can break up a thousand words.