How to rewrite your HR policies so they’re clear, concise and actionable
When your colleagues read your HR policies, how do you want them to feel? Engaged with what you’re saying? Confident in what they need to do? Energised and ready to take action?
Unfortunately, many HR policies don’t have this effect. They’re written in a way that makes them complex and difficult to understand. And they force colleagues to navigate through a labyrinth of information. Leaving them exhausted and uncertain about what’s expected and making it more likely HR will get a call for support.
This is not why HR teams spend hours writing policies.
In an ideal world, HR policies would help employees help themselves. Reducing queries for the HR team to deal with and minimising risk because policies are understood and applied.
It’s not HR’s fault that the policies aren’t written in the way they need to be. After all, HR experts aren’t writing professionals - they’re HR experts.
This is why several HR Directors have asked me to re-write their policies in plain English and apply a range of other copywriting tactics to take them from unfathomable to actionable. In this article, I share my top policy editing tips with you.
The major challenges with HR policies and how to solve them
Issue: formal language
Solution: write like you speak
‘Whilst’, ‘furthermore’, ‘forthwith’. These are some of the words I regularly come across as I edit policies. Yes, HR policies are fairly formal business documents. But there’s no need to make them sound like they’ve been written by someone who’s time travelled from the 18th century. Here’s a good rule of thumb for writing HR policies - if you wouldn’t say it in real life, don’t write it.
Issue: the active voice
Solution: get active
The passive voice often makes sentences longer and more wordy than they need to be. Whereas the active voice makes sentences less complex. Here’s a great example from Grammarly: “The passive voice is often maligned by teachers and professors as a bad writing habit. Or, to put it in the active voice, teachers and professors across the English-speaking world malign the passive voice as a bad writing habit.”
Write HR policies in the passive voice and it makes them even more difficult to grasp and makes it more likely your HR team will be bombarded with calls for support. Take a look at the free online tools at the end of this article to help you identify when you’re using the passive voice.
Issue: long and complex sentences or paragraphs
Solution: chop your sentences down in the right places
Sentences that go on for a long time tend to be more difficult for readers to understand. Sometimes short sentences can be complex too, particularly where there are lots of actors - like an employee, their partner, their line manager and the business. Luckily, there are lots of ways to break up long sentences:
Lists work well. Particularly where certain information is repeated in the paragraph. Make any duplicated information the introduction to the list and use bullets to set out the related points.
Split sentences where you have a conjunction like ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘because’, ‘for’, ‘so’, ‘yet’. Ignore what your teacher told you at school - it’s absolutely fine to start sentences with ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘because’.
Look for ‘that’ and ‘which’. You’ll often find you can put a full stop before these words and use them to start a new sentence, like this: “With so much information to wade through on a daily basis, employees are far more likely to engage with information that’s interesting, relatable and personal to them. Which is why employee personas are a must-have in your reward communication toolkit.”
Look for a verb ending in ‘ing’. You can often start a sentence with these kinds of words. Here’s an example from one of my blogs: “As older generations take up a smaller proportion of the workforce, younger generations will come to the fore. Presenting your business with a new world view and different demands that you’ll need to find ways to meet.”
Issue: legalese
Solution: use plain English
Sometimes legal get their hands on HR policies and tie the language in knots. And sometimes it feels safer for HR professionals to fall back on legal language or to copy and paste guidance from government documents. Which aren’t always too user friendly.
Here’s one of my favourite pieces of legalese from a bonus policy: “Where the context permits, the singular shall include the plural and vice versa and the masculine shall include the feminine."
This sentence is absolutely mindblowing. What does it mean?! With 14 years reward experience, I think it says this document applies to males and females and to individuals and groups equally. If I’m not sure, you can guarantee employees and managers have absolutely no idea either!
So why not drop the legal language, delete this sentence and use gender neutral pronouns 'they/them/their' - which are also singular and plural - throughout the policy? This is a more inclusive approach to writing in an era when gender neutral pronouns are becoming increasingly important.
Issue: writing in Latin
Solution: write in plain English
When did you last learn Latin? Probably never, unless you went to a private school. But most of the country wasn’t privately educated. So we need to avoid using latin terms.
A great example is ‘time off in lieu’. I was listening to Radio 1 and a caller said they thought this meant you got time off to go to Looe in Cornwall. Hilarious but not helpful. So, why not simply say ‘time off you are owed’? This is just one example but there are others out there so look out for LAtin when you’re writing and use the English equivalent instead.
Issue: unnecessary words
Solution: cut, cut, cut
HR policies can be really, really long. So removing unnecessary words is key to cutting word count. Here are a few you can get rid of very easily:
That - it’s a small word most sentences can do without. See how I could have said ‘it’s a small word that most sentences can do without’? Yet the sentence makes just as much sense without ‘that’ extra little word.
Words ending in 'y' or 'ly' - these can often be cut. I've just changed a sentence from 'was widely seen as a major issue' to 'this was a major issue'. No loss of meaning or emphasis but three words cut. Do this 20 times and you're down 60 words.
Replicated words - sometimes we say the same thing in two slightly different ways. This is unnecessary and it makes the audience’s brains work harder when there’s no need. Don’t be afraid to cut big chunks of text or to completely rewrite sentences. I recommend cutting and keeping sentences and paragraphs in a separate document. That way it feels easier to cut the copy because you're not deleting it and you can still put it back in if needed.
Here’s an example of a long sentence with duplicate words. I applied a number of editing tactics to make it clear including using a bullet point list, calling out who’s responsible for what and cutting the words down to create shorter, more understandable sentences:
Original: “If you are pregnant or have recently given birth or are breastfeeding, your manager will carry out a risk assessment to assess the workplace risks to remove the risk of harm or danger to your health and safety or that of your baby and the risk arises from either processes, working conditions or physical, chemical or biological agents in the workplace.”
Revised: “Line managers must:
Carry out a workplace risk assessment to protect the health and safety of anyone who is pregnant, has recently given birth or is breastfeeding. This will cover processes, working conditions, physical, chemical and biological agents.
Communicate any risks identified.”
Issue: policies lack a why
Solution: include your business’ values in the introduction
If your audience is clear why this policy is important to your business, they’re less likely to connect with it. But help them understand the link between the policy and how it supports your company values and you’ll be giving them a reason to engage. This doesn’t need to be heavy handed. Just dropping the relevant value into the introduction is often enough.
My five-step approach to HR policy editing
Here’s how I edit HR policies for maximum impact:
Read the original policy and make a copy.
Use all of the above tips to edit the document in track changes (or suggesting in Google Docs).
Create a new, clean version with all your edits accepted. Read this clean version and make any changes so it’s even clearer.
Read this version aloud. Anything that makes you stumble slightly needs to be revised.
Run the policy through some free online software to refine it again.
Online tools to improve your writing
There are a tonne of online tools - like Grammarly, Hemingway, ProWritingAid and Readable - that will help you:
Identify instances of passive voice which can be hard to spot
Check your grammar and punctuation
Keep your sentences to a suitable length.
You’ll also be able to compare the document’s reading difficulty level before and after you edited it. So you can be sure it’s understandable for your audience.
Be warned. Editing your HR policies takes a lot of time. Which is why HR Directors hire me to do the job so their team can focus on other priorities. If this sounds like a good option for you, get in touch at becky@clarioncallcomms.co.uk or on 07703 155 404 and we can discuss your project.