Why handbooks go unread
A staff handbook is usually written as a document: organised by department, with sections, an introduction and a tone borrowed from an employment lawyer. That is a sensible way to write something that must be complete, and a terrible way to write something that must be used.
Nobody opens a handbook to read it. They open it because they have exactly one question - can I authorise this, how long should this take, who signs this off - and they want the answer in under thirty seconds, on a phone, while somebody waits. If it takes longer, they ask a colleague instead, and the colleague answers from memory. Now you have two sources of truth and one of them is wrong.
So the failure is not that people will not read. It is that the document is not shaped like the way it is used.
- Nobody reads it in order, so an order is wasted effort
- Every question arrives in isolation, from somebody in a hurry
- The answer has to survive being read on a phone, standing up
- A thirty-second failure sends them to a colleague permanently
Write to the question, not the topic
The single change that makes the most difference is making your headings the questions people actually ask, in the words they use. Not "Expenditure Authorisation Policy" but "What can I approve without asking?"
It feels informal. It is also how somebody scanning on a phone finds their answer in four seconds, and it forces you to write an answer rather than a description of a policy area.
| Written as a topic | Written as the question |
|---|---|
| Expenditure Authorisation Policy | What can I approve without asking? |
| Customer Communication Standards | A customer is angry. What do I do? |
| Supplier Non-Conformance Procedure | A delivery is short. What now? |
| Absence Reporting Requirements | I am ill. Who do I tell, and when? |
| Vehicle Preparation Standards | How long should recon take? |
A useful test: if a heading is not something a member of staff would say out loud, rewrite it until it is.
Put the number in the sentence
The most common failure in a written procedure is not vagueness about process - it is vagueness about figures. "Managers may authorise reasonable amounts at their discretion" reads like a policy and answers nothing, so the question gets asked out loud anyway and the document has failed.
Write the figure. If the figure depends on something, write both the figure and the condition. If you are reluctant to write it down, that is worth examining - usually it means the rule has never actually been decided, and everybody has been guessing.
- "Up to $500 without asking. Above $500, ask a manager." - usable
- "Reasonable amounts at the manager's discretion" - not a rule, just a sentence
- Include the currency, and update it when it changes rather than rounding it in conversation
- If you cannot write the number, the rule does not exist yet - decide it now
This matters doubly if software is going to answer from your documents. A system cannot quote a figure that is not written, and a good one will refuse rather than invent it.
One page per question
Shorter and more numerous beats longer and better organised. A page that answers one question can be read on a phone in the time somebody is prepared to give it; a twelve-page departmental document cannot, however well structured it is.
Practically: aim for a screen or two per question, with the answer in the first sentence and the detail underneath. If a page needs scrolling three times, it is two pages.
- Put the answer in the first sentence, before any context
- Add the exceptions underneath, not before
- Keep it to a screen or two on a phone
- Use the words your staff use, including the informal ones
- Date it, so people know whether it is current
Start from the questions you have been asked
Do not start from a template of what a handbook should contain - you will write forty pages, most of it about situations that have never arisen, and skip the three questions you are asked weekly.
Start instead by listing every question your staff have asked you more than once in the last month. That list is short, it is real, and it is ordered by actual cost to you. Answer those, and you will have covered most interruption in a morning.
- Write down every question asked more than once this month
- Order it by how often, not by importance
- Answer the top five, one page each, with the real figures
- Tell people the answers exist - twice, because once is never enough
- Add a page whenever a new question gets asked twice
Five pages written this way will out-perform a fifty-page handbook, because five pages answer the questions people have and fifty pages answer the questions a template imagined.
Find out what your documents fail to answer
Here is the hardest part, and the most valuable. You do not know which questions your procedures fail to answer, because when a document fails, nobody reports it - they just ask a colleague and get on with their day. The gap is invisible by nature.
There are two ways to see it. Manually: for one month, write down every question you or your managers answer out loud, and check each one against your documents afterwards. It is tedious and it works.
The other way is to have whatever answers questions record the ones it could not. This is the part of our own product that owners consistently say surprised them: Bosun records every question your procedures failed to answer, counts repeats, and ranks them - so "we should write things down properly one day" turns into a specific list ordered by what is actually costing time.
- Every unanswered question recorded verbatim, and counted rather than duplicated
- Ranked, so the common gaps rise to the top
- Marked resolved once you add the page that answers it
- Usually three or four pages of writing closes most of the list - see answers from your procedures
Whichever method you use, the list is the point. Writing procedures without knowing which ones are missing is how businesses end up with a handbook nobody needed.
Keeping them alive
A procedure that is wrong is worse than one that is missing, because somebody will follow it. The maintenance burden is small if you attach it to something that already happens rather than scheduling a review nobody will hold.
- Change the page the same day you change the rule, not at a quarterly review
- Date every page, so a reader can judge whether to trust it
- When two documents disagree, that is the discovery - fix it rather than picking one in conversation
- Delete anything that describes a process you no longer run