Create A Handbook Your Employees Will Want To Read
In other blog entries, I have discussed in great depth the concepts behind an incentive-based employee reward system. Here, we are discussing the effect of merging the employee handbook into the incentive-based reward system book, resulting in one single resource.
Typically an employee handbook is never voluntarily read. If read, it is usually skimmed rapidly as it is as boring as reading the New York telephone white pages! Some businesses have employee handbooks that are over a hundred pages of mind-frying trivia, best used to cure insomnia, as a half-page is guaranteed to put you to sleep. To ensure it being read, some employers occasionally require each page to be signed by the employee, although all that ensures is that they signed each page. You still can’t be certain if they read any of them. Employees may look at one section–the list of holidays–but they usually already know that from various interview sessions, so even that is not a must-read page.
One handbook I have recently read is a stunning example of intelligent thinking, and is read immediately by every employee, absorbing every line, cover to cover like a great mystery novel. Why, you ask? How could it be, an employee handbook that is read with the excitement of a great book? Simple. The business owner designs and installs an incentive-based reward system that is carefully explained in a handbook format, and which includes the rules and regulations for participating in the incentive-based system. You can bet your last dollar it will be read and reread, as a bestseller might be. Within the pages of the incentive system–no longer an employee handbook, but now an incentive book–there are the requirements for higher earning and more pay, lots more. This type of handbook includes the way to earn more, the rules and regulations, and can successfully discuss such concepts as attitude, teamwork, employee/customer relations, career path requirements, cross-training requirements, educational requirements, appearance standards and all the material usually found in a typical employee handbook format.
An incentive handbook allows a business owner to create the culture he wants–a winning culture, a team culture, a culture within which owner and employees are truly working together. The concept of career path will surface and become meaningful as you will have succeeded in creating many reasons for employees to commit themselves to your system for as long as possible. The results will be a successful, very profitable company with happy, satisfied employees!
