Now that you know when to update your business’ employee handbook, this second entry into our three-part employee handbook series will teach you how to avoid small verbiage that can lead to big business bothers.

The employee handbook is your tool to distribute company policy in plain and simple English—so be careful to avoid commitments you don’t want to honor in the future.  To maximize understanding and minimize potential litigation, an effective employee handbook should be:

1. Easy to read – Remember the plain and simple English?  The handbook should be written in language easy for everyone to understand.  The handbook is not the place to show off your high-scoring Scrabble words.
2. Carefully worded – Don’t use wording that creates an employment contract.  Never promise to terminate employees for “good cause,” because good cause is subjective and will most likely be decided by a court!
3. Regularly updated – The handbook should contain a disclaimer stating that management reserves the right to periodically update the contents.
4. Consistent – To avoid potential misinterpretation, the handbook should be consistent within and between all sections.  Maintain a list of related policy items, where if one item changes, they all must be changed.
5. Realistic – Set only realistic promises and achievable goals.  Your employees are only human!
6. Appropriately detailed – Including too many fine details can come back to bite you.  For example, when it comes to performance reviews, it’s best to stay away from rigid statements like, “Performance reviews will be given annually.”  Such statements can lead to potential litigation troubles if not strictly followed.  Instead, indicate reviews will generally be conducted on an annual basis but may be given more or less frequently, as needed.
7. Fun – The last thing a new employee wants to do is trudge through 86 pages of dry reading.  Your handbook should be technically correct, but it can still be fun!  Try to incorporate a theme or fun graphics to make the entice employees to read.
8. Digital – Gone are the days of expensive, hardback handbooks better served as paperweights.  Distributing read-only electronic copies makes the handbook easier (and cheaper) to access and update, and means employees will never use their handbook as a doorstop.