A short guide to hours, time off, expenses and equipment that every employee and new hire can open.
Most small companies run on things everyone knows and nobody wrote down, until the fifth new hire asks the same question about expenses. A handbook fixes that, provided it's short enough to get read. The one for Skerry Maps, a made-up company of 20, takes about five minutes to read. Take its shape. It isn't legal advice, and neither is this page. Employment rules vary by country and often by state, so have a lawyer read your real handbook before staff rely on it.
Who it's for
A founder or office manager at a company of roughly 10 to 50 people. Send it to everyone once, and to each new hire on their first day.
It can't stand in for employment contracts, or for policies the law where you are may require in a set form. If you need proof that people have read it, collect that somewhere else, because a page can't take a signature.
What a good one contains
- The answers people look up, at the top. The sample opens with six: core hours, office days, vacation, payday, the expense limit and who to ask.
- A contents list. Eight sections, beside the text on a laptop and above it on a phone. After week one, people come back for one answer.
- Numbers where a vaguer handbook has adjectives. 22 days. By 9:30 am. $60 a day for meals. "Reasonable expenses" starts arguments, and the sample's rule for anything under $75 is "Buy it and claim it."
- What to do, next to what you get. The time-off table has three columns: the kind of leave, the amount, and the action. For public holidays the action is "Nothing."
- Where the contract and the law take over. On long illness and parental leave, the sample says the terms sit in your contract and local law, and names who will go through them with you.
- A who-to-ask table. Five rows by topic, each with a person and how to reach them.
- A version, a date and what changed. Version 4, November 2, two changes listed. Staff who read version 3 need only those two lines.
Before anyone relies on it
Write down only what you already do. A handbook that promises 22 days, in a company where managers sigh at every request, teaches people to trust neither.
Then get the legal read. Leave, sick pay, working hours and notice periods differ from place to place, and a friendly sentence can commit you to more than you meant.
Give the handbook one owner. The sample names its office manager and says she'll add any answer a reader can't find.
How to send it
To named people. It's for staff only, and it changes. Open it to everyone at your company's domain, and a new hire can read it the day their account exists.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
