Why Every Business Needs an Employee Handbook: The Secret to Consistent Results

Can you truly call yourself a business owner without one of these fundamental items? I get asked this question all the time: Do I need an employee handbook? The answer is always yes—you absolutely do.

Here's why: without repeatable processes in your agency, how can you expect consistent results? One of the main pillars of top performance is having effective systems. No repeatable system means no repeatable results. How can you expect employees to enjoy their jobs if they don't know what to do? How can you expect them to accomplish tasks if you haven't trained them or given them a roadmap to success?

An employee handbook, or playbook, does several things for your business. It creates consistent results, empowers your employees to be autonomous, allows them to find answers on their own, and, most importantly, it saves you time. Time is one of your most precious commodities, and it shouldn't be spent training your employees repeatedly on the same tasks—especially when an employee playbook could cover it.

A Real-Life Example

I recently got a call from an agent’s staff member. To give you some background, I used to be a field trainer for another insurance company for several years. A couple of weeks ago, a staff member from that company reached out to me. She told me the agent was out of the office, and she didn’t know how to create a quote for a client. I was shocked! I told her that back when I worked for that company, I had created a step-by-step guide for agents to follow. I emailed it to her, and she was blown away. She said, “Why has my agent never given me something like this?”

That’s the value of an employee playbook. When I owned an agency, I first created a quoting guide for my employees. The process was repetitive and time-consuming—sitting down with employees, watching them step by step to make sure they didn’t make mistakes. And even when I thought they had mastered it, errors would still occur, and they would constantly come back with questions.

A Game-Changing Approach

Then, I read the book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber, and it changed my entire perspective. After reading it, I created systems for my employees. I documented how to do a quote by literally doing one myself, taking a screenshot of every single step, and putting it all into a document. The document was detailed and easy to navigate: "Need to add a boat? Go to page 35. Need to add a rental home? Go to page 73. Finished with the boat? Refer back to page 10."

Once I created that, I could hire a new employee, hand them the quote information and the process guide, and they were effective from day one.

Today, in my current business, I have an employee playbook. When I onboarded an employee last month, I handed him that playbook, and guess what? He’s been effective from day one. Having systems produces consistent results; having no consistent system results in inconsistent outcomes.

Leveraging Technology for Better Results

Back when I started, I manually created those documents. Today, you don’t have to. Technology has advanced, and there are tools like Scribe or Vimeo that allow you to record yourself or your screen and create a video database that employees can reference. For example, with Scribe, you turn it on, it captures your screen, and documents every single click. You could turn it on and say, “I’m going to do a life insurance quote or a P&C quote.” Then, do your quote as normal, and it documents everything step by step.

There are fantastic resources available to help you create these processes. You need consistent results from your employees, and they need to know how to achieve them. Provide them with those processes and systems. Take the time to create them or assign these tasks to individuals.

If someone asks a question and you don’t know the answer, find someone who does. Then, empower that person to create the process, document it, and teach the team at your next meeting. This fosters ownership and autonomy among your team, enhancing trust and retention. Your employees will be happier, more engaged, and will enjoy working for you.

That’s the power of an employee playbook. So, go out there and create your own!

If you want more tips on creating systems and processes for your employees, comment "systems" and we’ll connect for a coaching call.