Rumor has it that, when the President’s legal counsel told him that waterboarding isn’t torture, he was comparing it to reading a typical employee handbook. Now that is real torture.
“Won’t talk, eh? Read this:”
“This document outlines the general Terms and Conditions of Employment and is a confidential document between you and “X” (hereinafter called “The Company”). Please read it carefully and sign it. This signifies your acceptance of the Terms and Conditions under which you are employed. You will be kept informed and notified in writing of any subsequent changes to your terms of employment.” *
Arrrggghhh! Stop, please!! I’ll talk!!!
So, how is it that employee handbooks make such a mockery of the English language and make employees feel like dirt all at the same time? Actually, there are just two problems with the humble handbook: the content and the writing.
Ok, I’ll grant that the handbook is a legal document and certain language is required in certain places. But, please. These are human beings we’re talking to, not automatons or idiots. You are trying to establish a relationship, after all. You need to set out the terms of the relationship and offer some guidance, that’s all. There is simply no reason that the human beings in management can’t speak to employees like they’re human beings too.
Back to my example; as horrible as it is, there’s nothing wrong here that a little effort and humanity can’t fix. Let’s tease apart a couple of examples, explore some of the stupid mistakes companies make in setting policies and writing handbooks and we’ll see how easy it is to fix them:
“Promotional recruitments are limited to employees with at least six months of continuous (full-time equivalent) employment.” *
At least we can figure out what is being said here! That’s a start. Let’s take a look at the two wrong things:
The content. Why on earth would you even consider such a policy? What company in its right mind discourages advancement? Say you hire Susie on Monday. By Friday you realize she is a superstar. A month later a job opens that is obviously perfect for Susie – it’s challenging but not too. It offers growth in a direction you know she wants to go. It pays better. She’s not expecting it. Let her apply. Susie will love you and love the company. The only downside is if she gets that job now you’ve got to fill this one again. Oh, the upheaval! Suck it up and promote her. You still have the stack of resumes from which Susie appeared in the first place – dig out your # 2 and #3 candidates and call ‘em up.
The writing. For some reason, people tend to depersonalize handbooks by writing them in an indirect voice. Where is the verb? “Limit”, that’s the action. Who is doing the limiting? Have ‘promotional recruitments’ somehow become sentient beings imbued with the ability to think and take action? Uh, no. Management…. that’s who. Also, handbooks already focus too much on what employees can’t do; why take something inherently positive, a promotion, and make it negative? Tell folks what they get, not what they don’t get.
So let’s try this a different way:
“We enthusiastically offer our employees the opportunity to apply for promotions whenever and wherever they arise.”
That wasn’t so hard. Let’s try another one:
“Performance reviews are normally conducted every six (6) months from the date of hire, with the exception of a three month review at the end of your probationary period.” *
The content: Ditch the probationary period. If there’s one thing we should all have learned during this last year, it’s this: we’re all on probation all the time. No job is safe. And what does putting a new employee on probation do for his psyche? He’s a new employee, for crying out loud! He’s excited! He’s thankful for a job! He’s ready to work hard and make you love him! Besides, there are legal reasons why having a probationary period is a bad idea (the short version: if being in a probationary period means an employee could easily be fired for whatever reason, then having successfully completed the probationary period seems to imply that the employee’s job is secure).
You made the poor sap jump through burning hoops of fire to get the job; you’re the one who picked him out of a stack of 200 resumes and offered him the job. If he’s not right for the job, well, that sounds more like it’s your fault. (Ah, now there’s an idea: put the hiring manager on probation every time he or she hires a new employee! I’ll bet we’d see the quality of our hiring increase just a tad).
The writing: “performance reviews are normally conducted…”? Like magic, they appear out of nowhere, those performance reviews, and then they conduct themselves. WE, management, conduct performance reviews.
How about we say this in plain English:
“After you’ve been working here for three months, we’ll sit done and have a conversation about your work. We’ll compare notes to see if we’re meeting your expectations and if you’re meeting ours. After that, we’ll hold a more formal performance review every six months.”
Get the idea? So, here’s how to rebuild your employee handbook:
First, take a long hard look at all of your policy statements; can you identify the business reason each one exists? If you have a policy that doesn’t work for the betterment of your business or that doesn’t foster the development of your employees, scrap it.
Next, run a few “find and replace” searches: find every instance of “The Company” and “management” and replace them with the simple and more personal “we”. Do it again changing “the employee” or “employees” to “you”. Almost instantly, you have humanized your relationship with your employees. Of course, this will create some quirky sentence structures but you’ll have a good smile as you clean those up.
Now the hard part: It’s time to pull out your machete and hack your way through the jungle one stinking sentence at a time. You will find it easier if you apply these next suggestions at the same time, paragraph by paragraph. Start by reading every sentence out loud. That will usually help you see where the smell is coming from. Here are some specific actions to take:
- Many sentences in a handbook are overly long. They might make more sense as two shorter sentences.
- Cut all the big and impersonal words. Who says “shall”? Nobody, that’s who. “Hereinafter”? Most lawyers don’t even talk like that anymore.
- Toss most of the stuff in parentheses (it’s usually redundant).
- Almost all sentences in a typical handbook are written backwards with the object and subject reversed. Think about what the action is and who is taking the action. Take the sentence apart if you need to and rebuild it.
I swear, you’ll read some sentences and you’ll scratch your head trying to figure out what it actually means. And each one you rewrite to read more clearly and more succinctly will make you feel more like a human being. You’ll feel like you opened the window on a spring day and let the fresh air in.
What does this look like in real life? Let’s try one more example to see how we’d tackle this process. You’d think that giving employees time off to vote would be simple. Hah! Read on. This cadaver is rotten to the core:
“On days when elections for public office (“elections for public office” includes elections for sheriff, school board, district attorney, and all primary and general elections) are scheduled throughout the state, county, city or town in which the employee is registered to vote, schedules will be changed as needed to ensure that work either starts at least three hours after the polls open or ends at least three before polls close”. *
Now, stop for a second and let yourself smile at the absurdity of that paragraph. For crying out loud, people! What are we trying to communicate here? The law says that employers need to give employees time off to vote. It’s not that complex. Try saying something like this:
“If you’re registered to vote and your normal schedule makes it difficult for you to get to the polls when they’re open, let us know. We’ll adjust your schedule so you can come in late or leave early ensuring that you have enough time to vote.”
Oh, and how might we rework that horrendous opening paragraph in a more humane manner? How about this?
“We have covered some of the basics about our working relationship in this handbook. It is a legal document, so we need you to sign the form in the back. That will let us know that we see eye to eye. We’ll tell you if anything changes.”
* Sadly, all of the examples I’ve included here are not only taken from real employee handbooks, they are available on the internet as “sample” handbooks for employers to download and use as their own. Communication is the core of our relationships and using an “off the shelf” handbook is simply a horrible way to waste one of the base line tools employers have to communicate with their employees.
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