by Regan MacBain Traub, CPC and Glenn Powell, Esq.

The Business Case: Greater Investment and Creativity in Employee Tools

  • Employers have experienced greater difficulty in talent acquisition, engagement, performance, and retention compared to before Covid (“The Post Pandemic Workplace: The Experiment Continues” by Jim Harter & Ben Wigert, Gallup. March 11, 2025):
  • Before widespread, concerning publicity about AI’s potential to reduce employee headcounts, employee engagement in organizations was already at a serious low of 29-31%. Based on our 30+ years of experience, we expect to see it drop further in the next six to twelve months or so.
Gallup Survey Question 1Q 2020 2025
Employee Engagement (average) 36% 31%
Employees feel their job connection to org. mission/purpose 46% 30%
Employees know what’s expected of them 56% 45%
Employees feel extremely satisfied by work 26% 18%
Employees feel respected 44% 37%
Employees feel their employer cares about their wellbeing 46% 24%
Employees seeking/watching for new employment 46% 51%
Employee pride in employer product / service 36% 28%
  • Costs of turnover range between 50% and 200% (Gallup) or more of a position’s annual cash compensation. If you have 100 employees with an average annual salary of $80,000, and average turnover rate of 25% you’re likely losing $1-4M/year without factoring in the cost of declining morale and performance and reputation ‘on the street’ which is likely impacting your ability to recruit desired talent.

As a result, to be successful in the foreseeable future, employers will need to step up efforts to meaningfully elevate employee engagement performance, and retention.

How Do People Tend to Feel About HR Policies & Handbooks?

On one hand, many simply consider HR policies and employee handbooks a matter of compliance and often, the last thing any leader, manager or employee wants to read. They tend to resemble an exhaustive list of rules and regulations. Want to read one of these lately?

On the other hand, what if the HR Policies and/or Handbook are:

  • Set out as a guide to support successful employment?
  • Framed by and intertwined with the underlying organizational mission, strategy and culture, informing the reader why and how the policy or practice is important, how it works, and why it is of value?
  • Informative about the organization’s vision, history, strategy, culture, structure, communications to employees, resources to support employees’ success?
  • Inclusive of an organization’s Employee Experience and/or Total Rewards statement?
  • Clear about why and how the organization commits to ensuring a great place to work?

The HR policies and handbook also could highlight employee success stories including what they did to be successful in this organization. Might you find this a more intriguing read? How might it inform the success of others?

When Do Employees Tend to Reference Their HR Policies or Handbooks?

More typically when an employee may:

  • Be facing a serious illness and needs to understand how to best manage anticipated time off from work;
  • Want to understand the types of leaves of absence (other than their personal serious illness) which qualify as FMLA Leave and for legally required reinstatement;
  • Become injured on the job and need to file for workers’ compensation;
  • Need to get a second job for additional income and to refresh their memory in making sure they avoid engaging in Conflicts of Interest;
  • Be seeking guidance about what social media posts about the employer and co-workers are allowed and not allowed.
  • Have concerns about how they or other employees are being treated and wants to correctly report their concerns to the employer and designated representative; and/or
  • Be thinking about leaving their employment and want to use up their accrued vacation and sick time before they provide notice of employment resignation;

Why Do Organizations Need to Have HR Policies and an Employee Handbook?

  • Compliance with applicable federal and state law;
  • To advise and educate employees and managers about their rights and responsibilities, as well as expectations for their behavior;
  • To support workplace civility and safety;
  • To promote consistency, ensuring that similar situations will be handled in a similar manner;
  • To help employees and employers grasp and collaboratively develop reasonable workplace or religious accommodations where legally required as well as to determine where and how to do so;
  • To encourage and enhance communication between employees and managers to ensure timely and deserved recognition and feedback and to avoid surprising and unpleasant communications; and
  • To serve as a recruitment tool, informing candidates of policies and practices prior to their employment acceptance.

Recommended Guiding Principles for Policies and Practices

Guiding principles for organizational policies and practices should include:

  • Being written in a clear and concise manner, understandable by employees at all levels of the organization;
  • Accurate compliance-related statements without use of overly legalistic language;
  • Allowance for senior management to depart from policies and practices in special, extenuating circumstances which should be rarely used exceptions and solidly defensible; and
  • Being seen as transparent, logical, reasonable, non-discriminatory, and consistently applied.

How Organizations Can Gain Far Greater Value from HR Policies and Handbooks

We have consistently proven to clients that when designed for culture development as well as talent acquisition, employee engagement, performance success, and retention, the value and appreciation for their employer, and use of, their employee handbook skyrockets. And, not only in the view of the employee… their family members and friends see your organization in a more positive, respectful light.

Picture this…

  • Your employee handbook is framed with your organization’s mission statement, strategy / strategic intent, desired culture (including values), and employee experience statement and is provided to finalist candidates as a talent acquisition tool, boosting their interest in your organization’s opportunity;
  • Each policy and practice is aligned with the mission, strategy, culture, values, and your commitments to employee experience;
  • Each HR sub-functions’ components are aligned and integrated, clear and consistent, and easy-to-grasp, creating a clear line of sight for each employee as to how they can meaningfully contribute to your organization’s strategy, culture, and success as well as ensure their own… for the longer term; and
  • Yes, it’s compliant, too, with policies and practices stated in easy to understand, culturally aligned tone and wording.

We’ve also created and embedded more creative tools in handbooks to spur:

  • Employee engagement (examples: quiz questions to increase organizational connection, knowledge, and fun; culturally authentic, interactive leader and employee images including teaming and community service);
  • Employee referrals (example: ‘grand prizes’ for greatest numbers of successful employees referred by another employee);
  • Employee development by citing succinct examples of employees’ career growth;
  • ‘Agency,’ driving decision making down through the organization to give employees a greater sense of ‘ownership’ and enable leaders to focus on leadership (example: customized Decision-Making Matrix across different operational units and at different levels);

In Supervisory Manuals, we’ve developed organizationally relevant scenarios, standards, policy purpose/intent, and definitions to introduce each organization policy, supervisory focus, responsibility, procedure, and form(s) or tool(s).

Engaging Policy and Practices Training

Employee and supervisor training on policies and practices can be engaging, too! It’s remarkable how many managers have lost connection with each other since Covid. Finding meaningful ways to rebuild managerial engagement, collaboration, and information exchange is important. They function as an organization’s ‘glue,’ connecting people and performance between leaders and frontline employees. How would you assess your managerial connection with employees today… more akin to construction paper paste or super glue?

What’s stopping you from starting the training program for supervisors and employees with a relevant experiential exercise that drives a heartfelt ‘aha’ on communications, behaviors, and/or teaming? When people feel something, they’re far more likely to remember its lesson. With supervisors and employees, you can also introduce a couple different, tough scenarios to groups to problem-solve and share with the rest of the class. Or, have some employees act out one or more scenarios for participants to assess and respond to.

A Case Study

Creating a Sense of Greater Employee ‘Agency’

Sought out by the General Counsel who wanted to assure this new business owner of HR compliance for this established firm, we were queried about our ability to help them create an Employee Handbook. In meeting with the new Owner/CEO, we learned that work was bottle-necked with him wanting to keep decision-making rights at the top to ensure high performance. The problem was that it was stymying his ability to devote time to business development to grow the organization. We raised the idea of elevating the value of the employee handbook we were writing for them by developing a decision-making matrix to facilitate decisions by staff like he would want, at various levels and across the organization to free up his time to devote to business development.

After a few hours with the CEO discussing decision making needs, mindsets, decision-making protocols and practices, concerns, and opportunities, we then created an easy to grasp matrix for employees to understand what decisions they should make and how they should go about doing so. During the rollout of the employee handbook, we conducted training on the policies of the firm and how to go about making decisions with the CEO providing examples from his experience.

It was a game-changing strategy that increased organizational growth and employee engagement where a decade later, employee sense of ‘ownership’ or ‘agency’ continues to result in high retention in an industry known for high turnover and the organization continues to grow significantly and win regional and national industry awards. In the first half of 2025, they were awarded:

  • Top Regional Family Business Award (51-200 employees);
  • Service Above Self Award for the organization and employees’ community support
  • Three (3) Hall of Fame Awards by their industry;
  • A Top 100 Builder in North America (for the 16th year)

We’re proud of their exceptional leadership, culture, and achievements.