While we were writing our guide to writing an employee handbook, it was striking how few public employee handbooks there were out there to read. Obviously, most companies don’t want to expose their internal workings, and that’s sometimes for a good reason. However, you can usually trust startups, excluding Uber and Zenefits, to be transparent about their operations.

And, when it comes to transparency, Basecamp’s handbook is an amazing example. It’s both a useful resource for companies looking to write their own policies from scratch, and a genuinely interesting read. In fact, it might be the first interesting company document I’ve ever read.

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9 out of 10 people are willing to earn less money to do more meaningful work. That means retaining employees goes far beyond offering a competitive salary.

Employees also watch whether the company gives them room to grow. Gallup tracks career growth as a core factor in employee retention and attraction, and a visible internal mobility program can reduce the risk that strong performers leave to find their next opportunity elsewhere.

Pre-boarding is the work that happens after a candidate accepts your offer and before their first day. It is where HR, IT, finance, the hiring manager, and the new hire all get aligned before the onboarding clock starts.

These must-know strategies for pre-boarding new hires help you turn that waiting period into a structured process: paperwork completed, access prepared, expectations set, managers ready, and the new hire confident before day one.

Reboarding is what you do when an employee comes back after an extended absence, changes role due to promotion or restructuring, or returns to a company that has changed enough that old habits no longer fit.

Successfully reboarding employees is not the same as onboarding. New hires need the basics; returning employees need context, confidence, refreshed expectations, and a clear path back into the team. If you want the broader first-day version, use this employee onboarding process guide alongside this reboarding plan.

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“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

We’ve all heard this question before in interviews. It’s one that most people (myself included) aren’t particularly fond of.

Employees are the lifeblood of any business or brand. It does not matter whether you manage two part-time staff in a family garage or 1,000 employees across a multinational team: employee performance is your business performance.

When employees are unengaged and working below their usual standard, the business feels it quickly. Under-engaged employees affect output, morale, retention, customer experience, and the overall success of your business.

Setting up HR software in the cloud is now the default way to run a modern people function, not the risky frontier it once felt like. Cloud computing reshaped how organizations buy and use IT services, and the HR department is one of the areas it changed most. Cloud-based HR software is technically focused, but the impact it has on the business and the people using it runs deep.

Cloud computing is the simplest way a company can take advantage of technology without spending money on expensive computer parts, an IT specialist, and on-site software. This beginner’s guide walks through what cloud HR software is, why it wins, and how to move your HR department onto it with high value and low risk, from screening to recruitment and termination.

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A multigenerational workforce can be a major advantage when managers treat age as context, not a label. Different career stages can bring institutional knowledge, fresh operating habits, customer empathy, technical fluency, and practical judgment into the same team. The management challenge is to turn those differences into clearer communication and better execution instead of letting assumptions harden into friction.

That challenge matters because employee engagement is still under pressure. Gallup reports global employee engagement at 20%, with low engagement carrying a major economic cost. At the same time, workforces are spanning more life stages: the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported nearly one in five older Americans in the labor force in 2025, while younger workers continue to push for growth, flexibility, and stronger manager support.

My grandparents have a strange aversion to technology. Every time they pronounce “Wi-Fi” as “whiff-ee,” I instinctively want to grab their router, phone, and laptop and run a quick troubleshooting workshop at the kitchen table.

That instinct is exactly why reverse mentoring works. Instead of assuming seniority is the only source of workplace knowledge, a reverse mentoring program gives junior employees a structured way to teach leaders about emerging tools, customer habits, workplace culture, and the everyday friction that formal reporting lines often hide.

Onboarding documentation is the record of how a new hire moves from offer accepted to fully productive. It covers the steps, owners, handoffs, documents, approvals, and exceptions that make onboarding repeatable instead of improvised.

Good documentation does more than explain onboarding. It gives HR, managers, IT, finance, and the new hire a shared path to follow, so work does not disappear into Slack threads, spreadsheets, or memory.

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