The eight policies that actually change behavior.
Your handbook is 80 pages. Eight of them do all the work. Cut the rest.
We've audited a lot of handbooks. The median agency handbook is 60 to 90 pages. The median IC reads zero of them. The median manager reads the handbook only when they're about to fire someone. The pages that show up in actual conversations between managers and reports are usually fewer than ten.
The other 70 pages are the company's legal anxiety, written down. Useful in court, maybe. Useless as an operating document.
A policy that nobody reads is not a policy. It's a liability decoration.
The eight that matter
Compensation and bonus logic. How pay is set, when it gets reviewed, what triggers a re-leveling.
Performance management. The cadence, the rubric, the consequence of repeated underperformance.
Hiring and references. How offers get made, how references get checked, who signs off on what.
Time off and leave. PTO accrual, parental leave, bereavement, sabbatical eligibility.
Working norms. Hybrid policy, expected hours, communication response expectations, meeting culture.
Conflict and grievance. What you do when something has gone wrong, who you go to, what happens next.
Departure. Resignation notice, severance, garden leave, what happens to equity, what gets returned.
Conduct. The handful of things that get someone fired immediately — explicitly named, not implied.
What we cut
Almost everything else. Dress code, unless there's real legal exposure. Bring-your-pet, same. The 11 paragraphs explaining what professional behavior means. The benefits explainer — link to the actual benefits doc, don't re-explain it.
What remains is short, plain, and read. Which is what a policy is for.