A new colleague starts on Monday. By Wednesday they have asked four people how to book leave, where to find the shared drive, who approves a purchase and what to do when a laptop stops working. Each person answered a little differently. None of the answers was written down.
Large companies solve this with a handbook of dozens of pages. In a company of ten or forty people, that handbook is usually either never written or written once and never opened again. A one-page staff handbook is a more realistic target. It will not cover everything, and it is not meant to. Its job is to answer the questions people ask most often, in one place, in plain language.
What the page is, and what it is not
The page is a quick reference for daily working life. It tells people how things normally work here and who to ask when they do not.
It is not an employment contract, a legal policy or a replacement for them. Rules on working time, leave entitlement, data protection and workplace safety differ by country and are often fixed by law or contract. Where the page touches those topics, it should link to the authoritative document and say only what a person needs to know to act. If in doubt, check with your lawyer or payroll provider before publishing.
What goes on the page
Start from the questions you have actually been asked in the last year. In most small companies they fall into seven groups. Give each a heading and two to four lines.
- Working time and place. Core hours, how to agree remote days, how to tell the team you are unavailable.
- Time off. Where to submit a request, who approves it, how fast to expect an answer. If you already have a request routine, link to it rather than repeat it.
- Money. How expenses are claimed, the limit above which a purchase needs approval, and who pays invoices.
- Tools and access. The five or six systems everyone uses, who grants access, and what to do when something does not work. Do not put passwords or technical details on the page.
- People and roles. Who is responsible for what, in one line each: finance, customers, IT, hiring. This is the section people use most in the first month.
- Rules that matter. The few things that cannot go wrong: confidentiality, handling of customer data, what to do after a security incident, and how to use AI tools. For the last one, a separate one-page rule is better; see a one-page acceptable use policy for generative AI.
- When something goes wrong. Whom to call about a safety problem, a mistake that affects a customer, or a conflict at work, including one person outside the direct management line.
If a section grows beyond a few lines, it does not belong on the page. Write the detail in a separate document and put the link on the page.
What to leave out
- Values and mission statements. They belong on the website or in the onboarding conversation.
- Anything that changes every month. Project lists and current priorities go stale in weeks.
- Rules nobody enforces. A rule on the page that the company ignores teaches people to ignore the page.
- Long explanations of why. One sentence of reason is enough; the rest is for a conversation.
Who owns it
A page without an owner is accurate on the day it is written and wrong six months later. Name one person as the owner, usually the office manager, the operations lead or the managing director in a small firm. Name a deputy who can make edits when the owner is away. Put both names on the page.
The owner does three things: keeps the page current, collects questions that the page did not answer, and decides what is added or removed. The owner does not have to be the author of every rule. Finance still decides what the expense limit is; the owner makes sure the page shows the current number. The same logic applies to other shared information; for a similar approach to business data, see who owns the data in each business system.
How often to update it
Two triggers are enough.
- A fixed review twice a year. Put it in the calendar for January and July. The owner reads the page with fresh eyes, checks that every link works and every name is still correct, and asks two or three colleagues what they looked for and did not find.
- A change in how the company works. A new tool, a new office, a new approver, a changed expense limit. Update the page within a week of the change, not at the next review.
Show the date of the last review at the top of the page. Readers trust a page that says "reviewed 12 July" more than one without a date, and the date also tells the owner at a glance when the next review is due.
Where to keep it and how people find it
Choose one place that everyone already uses: the intranet, the shared drive or the pinned message in the main chat. Keep a single master version and make everything else a link to it. Printed copies go out of date silently, so if you print the page for new starters, put the review date on it and replace the stack at every review.
Mention the page in the first-day conversation and in every answer to a question it covers. "It is on the handbook page, section 3" is a short answer, and it teaches people where to look next time. When the same question arrives for the third time, that is a signal to improve the page, not to answer again by hand.
Where AI can help, and where it should not
An AI assistant can draft the first version from your existing emails and documents, shorten long sections, check links, or answer a colleague's question by pointing to the right section of the page. It should not decide what the rules are, and it should not see personal data about employees to do this job. Use only tools your company has approved, and have the owner read every line before it is published. When the assistant answers from the page, it should link to the section so the colleague can check the original.
For a related routine that matters when people are away, see a one-page sheet for handing over work.
What to do this week
- Collect the ten questions new and existing colleagues asked most often in the last year.
- Group them into the seven headings above and write two to four lines for each.
- Replace long explanations with links to the existing documents.
- Name the owner and the deputy and put their names and the date on the page.
- Publish it in one place, tell the team where it is, and set the first review in the calendar.
A one-page handbook takes an afternoon to write and about an hour twice a year to keep alive. It will not answer everything, but it will stop the same five questions being answered five different ways.