At Hands On Human Resources, we cater for start-ups and maturing organisations developing a bespoke employee handbook and drafting company policies and procedures. Whether you’re building a business from the ground up or refining your people practices as you grow, having the right tools in place to communicate expectations, values, and culture makes all the difference.

So, why is it so important to have an employee handbook?

Because it paints a picture of what you expect from your team and gives them the structure they need to put the pieces of the puzzle together. It outlines your policies, procedures, and employee rights and responsibilities, while giving insight into your company culture and how you operate. It also serves as evidence that your employees have been informed of your rules, something that can be invaluable should you find yourself at the CCMA.

While it’s not a legal requirement to draft and implement a handbook, it’s absolutely a best practice. Think of it as one of the most valuable tools in your HR toolkit  helping you build clarity, confidence, and consistency across your organisation.

Top 8 Reasons to Have an Employee Handbook

Your handbook is a living, breathing guide.

Here are the Top 8 Reasons to create one:

1. Defines your organisation’s rules for success
2. Acts as a motivational tool for compliance
3. Shows why your company is a great place to work
4. The first step towards building a great culture
5. Opens the lines of communication between employees and management
6. Helps new starters get up to speed with the do’s and don’ts
7. Feels like a group hug from your team, cultivating a sense of belonging and job satisfaction during onboarding
8. Serves as a comprehensive guide on how your business operates

What’s Inside a Traditional Employee Handbook

A Traditional (Standard) Employee Handbook focuses on clear, written content professionally drafted in MS Word and presented in PDF or your preferred digital format.

Typical content:

• Company philosophy, vision and mission
• Employment practices
• Performance management
• Disciplinary code and procedures
• Grievance procedure
• Health and safety
• Remuneration and benefits
• Workplace conduct
• Financial regulations
• Company facilities
• Skills development
• Confidentiality
• Conflict of interest

A well-structured handbook helps make employment laws work for you. But more than that, it’s an opportunity to communicate stability, community, opportunity, recognition, and innovation the building blocks of a strong organisational culture.

From Employee Handbook to Culture Playbook

As businesses evolve, so should the way we communicate culture. That’s where the Culture Playbook comes in.

A Culture Playbook takes the traditional employee handbook and brings it to life. It combines policies and culture with big, bold communication and a conversational writing style, making it fresh, readable, and engaging.

Think videos, e-books, infographics, or other digital formats that reflect your unique brand personality.

What we highlight in a Culture Playbook:

• Who you are
• Why work with you
• Why you do what you do
• What you do
• Your company culture and how you operate
• The employee lifecycle
• Snapshot of company policies
• Career paths and growth opportunities
• Work–life integration
• Health and safety
• Performance review process
• Benefit eligibility and perks
• Graduate programmes
• Coaching and mentoring opportunities
• Social events and team connection

Developing a Culture Playbook capitalises on why your policies are important and how they benefit your people. It turns compliance into culture and transforms information into inspiration.

Keep your Policies Alive

Your policy documents and handbooks shouldn’t gather dust. They are living documents, and they need to evolve with your business and with legislation. We recommend reviewing them annually, especially following any legal or organisational changes.

Policies we highly recommend including:

• COVID-19 Policy
• Work From Home (WFH)
• Internet Usage
• Social Media
• Incentive Scheme
• Travel and Expense Claims

Choosing What Fits Your Business

So, which option best suits your business?Whether you choose a Traditional Employee Handbook, a Culture Playbook, or a blend of both, the goal is the same  to create clarity, connection, and a culture your people believe in.

At Hands On Human Resources, we help you design employee resources that go beyond policies documents that inspire your people and strengthen your company culture as you grow.

✨ Let’s build your culture together.

Get in touch at www.hohr.co.za to start developing your next handbook or Culture Playbook.

Career development drives both employee engagement and retention. Progressive organisations committed to skills development will attract top talent. It shows the candidate, firstly that you value the human experience and secondly increases their belief that opportunities for growth exist within your company.

In our ever-changing working world with millennials demanding more opportunities to hone existing strengths and grow into leadership roles, providing your employees with career development opportunities can help prevent them from jumping ship too soon and reduce unnecessary costs spent on sourcing new talent simultaneously topping up your talent pool ready for you to dive into when they swim ashore to take up a new job opportunity or career move.

As we know losing great talent is a costly affair. Your employees who are recognised and progress in their careers are more likely to be more engaging and mentor newbies on their career journey.

Showing your employees how what they are learning now will prepare them for their next job is also a great employee motivational tool for their employability.

It is a win-win for you and your employees.

We all learn and grow at our own pace so we cannot apply a “one size fits all” approach to career development or most aspects of work and life for that matter.

Career development drives both employee engagement and retention. A win-win for both the company and the employee.

“Help your employees grow—and watch your business thrive. Begin building a career development plan now!”

Explore our services at HoHR.

 

Competency based interviewing does prove valuable in drawing out the required competencies, consideration for the soft skills, such as communication, creativity and emotional intelligence- personal qualities play a critical role in a potential employee’s ability to succeed are equally as important, and the most critical factor being “culture fit”. Research increasingly shows that hiring people for “cultural fit,” or seeking out individuals who align with your company’s unique culture and values, is an essential part of effective, strategic hiring. A study found that 84% of recruiters surveyed agree that cultural fit, is one of the most important recruitment factors, and 9 out of 10 have reported passing on applicants who didn’t feel aligned with their companies’ cultures which supports our opinion on the subject.

What is “culture fit”?

Cultural fit is the way in which an employee connects with the organisational culture. This culture is formed from the values, vision, norms, working language, symbols, belief systems and habits of staff, along with their tacit agreement to a set of acceptable behaviours.

When these elements are aligned, they create social cohesion, and a high level of social cohesion builds strength in the organisation.

Will the individual fit in with the culture of the organization, will they get along with their team members and management? You can train an employee to do things your way, the technical skills, to deliver the outcomes you set for them to achieve, unfortunately you cannot alter their values, habits and belief systems to make them and align with your culture.

The obvious solution is to look for candidates that fit both categories; possessing the skills required as well as fitting the culture, it is easier said than done I am afraid.

The Interview process

The interview process does not have to take place in a formal setting at a boardroom table, in fact we prefer to have a chat over a cup of coffee- even if it is a virtual coffee. This is a sure way to get to know the REAL person behind the CV. Further to this there are many assessment tools to use to determine whether the person will support the companies’ mission and vision and so you do not have to only rely on your “gut feeling” about a person.

Diversity is also a very important consideration,  you don’t want to accidentally build a team of people who all think, look and act the exact same way either, so be sure to assess the team dynamic to identify what knowledge, skills and attributes are lacking in the team dynamic to be sure of the most suitable talent to source.

The common questions we as HR Professionals traditionally trained to screen are exploring why the candidate was job hopping, noting if they prefer a corporate vs private employment, whether or not the individual is willing to work overtime (even if the role recruiting for is an office job working a typical 8 to 4) Where do you see yourself in 5 years? We understand this question is testing to see how ambitious the candidate is, how relevant are these questioning techniques in the new world of work which is ever-changing?

Problem solving, relationship building, prioritizing tasks, coping with work pressures and how the candidate responds to setbacks are important competencies to test.

6 QUESTIONS TO ASK IN THE INTERVIEW:

1. Why do you think your are suitable for the job?
2. What value do you think you can add to the position and company?
3. How do you spend your free time?
4. How do your work responsibilities impact your private life?
5. What are your expectations from an employer?
6. What kind of working conditions are important to you?

If you do not match the right talent with the role your employee is most likely to be stressed, de-motivated and will exit the business on the first opportunity they get.

It may surprise you to know that surveys indicate that up to 74% of people are most likely to leave their jobs because they do not identify with their companies’ culture, which is quite a high percentage.

Turnover is costly, recruitment fees can be exorbitant, and training the candidate to get them up to speed with the way things work in your organisation takes time before you see return on your investment.

We appreciate the impact that this has on both parties and so work closely with our clients to ensure we have a good understanding of their culture and carry out personal assessments to ensure we target the “culture fit” you require.

Sourcing with special care and professionalism for “the right fit” without breaking the bank.

Get in touch.

I completely get that motivation starts with the self. However, there is also a role that you play in recognition and supporting the processes of job satisfaction and employee retention through the implementation of continuous feedback which will cultivate a positive and productive organizational culture.

How are you currently measuring, reviewing, and rewarding your employees for their commitment and hard work? I hear you saying… I pay them a salary and, a good one at that, so they must do their jobs and just get on with it. Yes, I have no doubt your salary package is competitive.

However, these are humans, not resources. They are no different to you. 

If this is your attitude, you will continue “to get what you get”. If you want to cultivate a “reward culture” and want to build harmonious working relationships, then it would be in your best interest to consider taking a different view on the subject.

We find organizations often continuously steamrolling employees with work, pushing them to work around the clock to achieve their deliverables without any positive recognition over and above the reward of their monthly remuneration. The reality is this is not enough to keep employees engaged.

Organizations that have implemented traditional performance management systems which do not include continuous feedback models often don’t get buy-in from staff and line managers and the process is viewed as a simple paper-and-pencil exercise because the tool is not appropriately linked to reward and recognition as it should be.

Over time your employees do what needs to get done. Still, they don’t exceed expectations because the message communicated is that whether they meet expectations OR exceed expectations they get the same results, no daily, or weekly feedback on performance (whether constructive or destructive). So how do they improve their performance or continue to produce beautiful work if this is your performance management practice?

They become de-motivated because the feedback is only communicated during these “performance review conversations” on either an annual or quarterly basis, which is way too long to wait for feedback.

Humans want and need instant gratification. Resistance to this fact is not going to result in building harmonious working relationships.

Employees burn out and exit organizations early for many reasons however failure to recognize people for their efforts continuously is most definitely a large contributing factor.

Surveys carried out by SHRM support this view as they indicate that 86% of HR professionals report that when peer-to-peer feedback forms part of the performance management process it has had a major positive impact on the performance of their organizations and employee morale leading to retaining star talent.

With talent being in short supply, developing people is vital, historically human capital was plentiful so businesses focused on who to retain, who they could let go, and who deserved to be rewarded, and so performance reviews served their purpose. Our focus needs to shift to development, making the transition from traditional reviews or appraisals inevitable.

If you are curious, we have a simple effective solutions for you!

Book a Consultation with us.