A staff handbook plays a vital role in any business. It sets out what is expected of all employees as well as informing everybody of the company's rules and regulations. So when exactly would you need to consider updating it?
Over time, processes, company regulations and government laws change. Your staff handbook should always represent the most recent updates so as to ensure that everybody is well aware. Whilst it might not be possible to reprint and distribute a hard copy version of every staff handbook, ensuring that a digital version is at least available and employees are made aware of major changes that might have a knock on affect on them.
When it comes to widespread changes in company policy a full review of the existing handbook may need to be initiated. New technologies tend to be a major issue for some businesses. For example, if most of your staff are working on computers, you might have had to move to restrict internet access; particularly to social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook.
The staff handbook is essentially there as a reference for all employees, so by not including vital updates they are well within their rights to argue their defense. In any business you have to be clear about the boundaries and expectations you have of staff; any ambiguity can lead to confusion and other problems further down the line. Therefore, the clearer you are in the staff handbook, the better informed your staff will be.
There is an expense involved in generating a whole new staff handbook. As such it is often preferable to simply go through and make alterations as and when required. By doing it this way you can keep costs down and still ensure that everybody is kept in the loop. Quite often staff will only use their handbook as a quick reference, so resending it to each one for each minor amendment will be as futile as it is costly.
You can keep a hard copy in the staff room or other public space and inform employees through email or message board of any changes that will impact them. If you are an office based business, there's no harm having a digital version of your staff handbook saved on the server. This way employees can access it quickly as and when they require and it won't cost you a penny for them to do so.
So if you are keeping a digital version of your staff handbook, which can then be printed for any newcomers, making changes is a straightforward process. Simply access the document and update, being sure to save it as a new version and archive the previous one. Of course you don't want to be doing this too regularly, but as and when essential changes occur within the company they should be noted - either in batches or individually.
The staff handbook is an important resource for people right throughout an organisation. It is the management's obligation to ensure that it is kept up to date and only they can truly decide at what juncture it is updated to reflect new changes.
Vincent Rogers is a freelance writer who represents a number of UK businesses. For employment documents, he recommends Cleardocs, one of the UK's leading suppliers of staff handbooks.
