How-to

How to publish a staff handbook your team will actually read

A step-by-step guide to a staff handbook with Docs Pro: write it with your colleagues, take their suggested changes, publish it as a Space only your team can open, and keep it up to date.

By Darryl Waterhouse · · 2 min read

Most staff handbooks live in a shared folder nobody opens: a long file, a few years out of date, with nobody quite sure which copy is the right one. Docs Pro turns the handbook into a small website of its own, a Space, that only your team can read, and that you update in one place.

This guide sets one up for our made-up company, ACME Ltd.

1. Write the pages in Docs

Put each part of the handbook in its own document in a folder: holidays and time off, expenses, health and safety, who to call. Short pages are easier to find and easier to keep current.

Share the folder with the colleagues who help write it. Make them Editors, or Suggesters if you would rather keep the pen yourself: a Suggester's changes wait for you to accept them.

2. Let colleagues suggest changes

When a Suggester edits, or an editor turns on Suggest changes, the edits arrive as suggestions instead of changing the text. Additions show in green and removals in red, each with who made it.

Suggested changes in a price list, with Accept and Reject on each one

Accept or reject them one at a time, or all at once. Nothing changes until you say so.

3. Talk it through in comments

Highlight a few words and add a comment, or comment on the whole document. Colleagues reply in the thread, and you resolve it once it is settled, so the page stays clean.

Comments on highlighted words and on the whole document, with replies

4. Publish it as a Space

Turn the folder into a Space and choose who can read it. For a handbook, that is your signed-in members: your team, and nobody else. Pick a home page and how the reader looks the first time someone opens it.

Space settings: who can read it, online or offline, the home page and the reader's look

Your team gets a proper reader, with contents, search, "On this page" and their own choice of font and text size. It remembers where each person stopped.

The staff handbook in its reader, with contents, search and On this page

5. Keep it up to date

Edit a page in Docs and the Space shows you what has changed since it was last published. Publish one change, or everything, when you are ready. Your team always sees the version you have signed off.

The Space in Docs: what is published, what has changed, and Publish

If you want a copy outside your site as well, Docs Pro can keep one in your own cloud storage.

Quick checklist

  1. One short page per topic, in one folder.
  2. Colleagues suggest changes; you accept them.
  3. Settle questions in comments, then resolve them.
  4. Publish as a Space for signed-in members.
  5. Publish changes when you are happy with them.

Explore Docs Pro or see a live Space: our user manual.

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