Your organization’s Culture Guide plays a key role in helping the company run smoothly. It goes beyond the scope of an employee handbook by covering company essentials, setting expectations, and guiding employees through many of the everyday processes they need to do their jobs.
But even a great Culture Guide doesn’t stay perfect forever. As policies and priorities evolve at your organization, your Culture Guide should evolve too.
Read on for the top three updates you should make to your Culture Guide in 2023 for a successful new year.
As teams grow and change and the world of work evolves, HR is uniquely positioned to keep the Culture Guide accurate and relevant. It’s a living document, and keeping it correct and up to date is crucial for your organization’s success.
Updating your Culture Guide can help your organization stay compliant with changing labor laws and regulations. New federal and state policies often go into effect on January 1, so updating the compliance sections in your Culture Guide right away is crucial.
To avoid potentially harmful litigation, make sure employees get up to speed on any changes you make—and document it. If you use an all-in-one HRIS like BerniePortal, employees can sign off digitally on substantial changes to our Culture Guide within the Compliance feature of the software.
These updates can also address changes in company culture and in-house policies, which can help save you, managers, and employees both time and confusion. If your company’s employee handbook doesn’t have a place for information about company culture, consider an even bigger update: transforming your employee handbook into a Culture Guide. Here’s how:
If your Culture Guide is already in place, there are three key updates you’ll want to make to it this year.
Each year, audit your Culture Guide to make sure its compliance information is up to date and accurate. That includes:
In addition, there are several key changes to employment law that may affect your organization in 2023.
If you don’t have organizational and team mission statements in place, that’s the first step. Learn how to write a mission statement, and get one in place for your organization and each department—including HR.
When you update your Culture Guide, it’s vital to check that company and team mission statements still work. If your organization’s direction has changed, or even if you just find your original goals were too vague, updating these statements can set your team up for success in the new year.
You might also consider including each team’s goals for the year in the Culture Guide. Lay out what each department plans to accomplish this year, including what metrics they’ll use to measure their success and, if applicable, how success will be linked to variable compensation.
Including goals in your updated Culture Guide each year will give your employees easy access to the information they need to perform at their best.
Every organization is different, but there are some rules of thumb that can help you make a list of practical updates that make sense for your team.
Auditing and updating your Culture Guide is a great first step to set your organization up for success in the new year. Just remember, these compliance, culture, and practical issues don’t end at the last page of your Culture Guide—they follow you through every part of your job as an HR pro.
You can stay informed, educated, and up-to-date with important HR topics using BerniePortal’s comprehensive resources: