Over the years, I’ve written dozens of employee handbooks. In the beginning, these contained fairly standard formats that were not very exciting, and consequently they weren’t very popular or well-read:
· They were mostly filled with rules.
· Many of them stressed what not to do.
· They rarely bothered explaining what to do.
· It was mostly what companies gave employees.
· And then what was expected from them in return.
Over the course of writing all these handbooks, it started to dawn on me that the more rules we put in them, the more rules employees broke. The rules in those initial handbooks seemed to be used primarily to cite performance miscues on counseling notices. That’s when I started replacing the “don’ts” cited in those rules with more positively focused “do’s” and explaining what management would do when we caught employees doing things right. Later versions of these handbooks contained fewer and fewer rules and ultimately started referencing only the Golden Rule – to treat others and their stuff the way you wanted others to treat you and your stuff. Simple and straight-forward. More positive and inspiring. But as I looked at today’s quote, the lightbulb in my head began flashing with the idea that maybe this should also be included in handbooks, right next to the Golden Rule. Think about it – a handbook that said: if it’s not right, don’t do it; and if it’s not true, don’t say it. That’s a standard we all should get behind today.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 – 180): Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher.
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