As The Fixx sang anxiously in 1982, "One thing leads to another."
Here in the anxious environment of 2020, that statement may be more true than ever. The arrival of COVID-19 led the federal government to pass economic relief legislation, such as the FFCRA. Responding to that, employers updated their policies to comply, but in many cases they also re-evaluated existing leave policies to adapt to the required changes. All of this filtered down to HR departments, which needed to codify these policies in employee handbooks so that employees could understand what all of this realistically means for them. Then more legislation, then more policies, then more handbook changes.
What is new here is not change itself. That's always been present. What is new is the rate at which critical change seems to be occurring and the speed with which HR departments are required to respond. It's no longer feasible for organizations to reprint and manually redistribute their employee handbooks with each alteration. Email helps, but managing various versions via multiple email threads can lead to confusing.
The best and most organized way to distribute rapid and frequent modifications to your employee handbook is by using the announcement and document distribution features of a Human Capital Management system, such as People Savvy HCM. These easy-to-use tools allow HR administrators to release the already digitized version of the latest and greatest employee handbook and proactively let employees know about it. Here's how it works.
The HR administrator completes some basic information about the updated handbook announcement, including what it should say, when it should appear to employees on their dashboards, and how long it should remain available. S/He can even specify that the announcement should pop up on login, so that it's impossible for employees to overlook. Then s/he selects the already stored handbook file to accompany the announcement as a download. Done!
Now, the next time employees log in to clock in, download a pay statement, request time off, or anything else, they will immediately see the announcement on their dashboards.
From here, they can click on the announcement itself to get all the details that the HR administrator included in the announcement. They will also see a paperclip link that can be used to download the updated document itself.
As with all Employee Self Service features in People Savvy HCM, the announcements feature allows HR administrators communicate information to employees efficiently and with minimal effort, and it allows employees to get the information they need to know about without spending excess time tracking someone down.
If you'd like more information on how these and other Human Capital Management features work, please contact us at your convenience. And if you need help keeping your employee handbook up to date, we've got a solution for that, too. People Savvy HCM Essentials has HR Advisors available to provide you with all the guidance you need to maintain a current and compliant handbook. Check out how it works today!