A short coaching video by an HR coach at Contractor Coach Pro emphasizing the importance of tone and language in HR policies. The speaker recommends "flipping the lens"—writing policies from the employee's perspective—so policies communicate company culture, show employees they are valued, and exist to help them succeed. Practical policy areas mentioned include termination, hiring, and time-off/vacation rules.
As the HR coach for Contractor Coach Pro, I talk with a lot of our clients about their HR policies and procedures. They might want to know how the proper way to terminate employee is or what should that process be for hiring somebody for the first time? Maybe they have some employees and now they're looking at creating their time off or vacation policies and want to know how to create those. As we talk about those policies, one thing that you may not think of that we pay really close attention to is the tone and the language that we use. It can be easy to fall into the trap of historical HR practices, of using very legally heavy words or language, but we pay a lot of attention to what the policies we're creating actually say about the company and the organization. One of the ways we do this is we actually flip the lens. Instead of just talking about these policies in the way that we as the company think about them, we try to put ourselves in the shoes of the employee. What would they want to hear? How would they want to receive this information? We put a lot of thought into that because we want to make sure that we're communicating the culture and how much we value the employees being a part of the organization. After all, these policies and procedures are not there to slap their hands or to hold them to something, but truly to help them. To help them be successful in your organization and to help them feel valued.
