The Simple Manual On Survival
– Finally, a welcome manual that people actually read
Growth and profit are a product of how people work together.
In a Nutshell
What is the purpose of an employee handbook? Is it to inform employees about the ways of the company they’re joining? Is it to create a safety net of sorts for the company to guard itself against potential lawsuits? Or, should it be to encourage employees to use their best judgments; to act according to common sense; and to be brave enough to bend or break rules when following them would only compound the situation?
It’s not unusual to see most large organizations, their leaders and employees getting obsessed with their rulebooks. The need to consistently maintain the highest levels of productivity and efficiency have given birth to tomes of rules and rigid corporate cultures. And when there’s transgression, such companies unravel fast into chaos that gets irrevocably magnified by social media. However, the way in which a company reacts to such transgressions will have a huge impact on how customers perceive them.
This isn’t to say that rules and rulebooks are entirely useless either. But, rulebooks that guide people towards actions that make the most sense, in a given situation, will help companies stay nimble, make good calls and resolve problems fast. Voluminous company dictates that edify conventional laws of governance won’t work in the fast-paced and social media savvy market of today. Besides, employees are hardly going to read or internalize a rulebook that spans several pages and appears to be overloaded with text.