I want to build an internal Wiki for my team that will act as a living employee handbook. What are the best options for doing this using existing technology available on the web?
The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Blissbook
Use Blissbook; this is a no-brainer. Blissbook offers employee handbooks as a service. They create beautiful and culture-building handbooks that live in physical and digital form. The online tools are living and can be changed at anytime.
– Adam Lieb, Duxter
2. SweetProcess
If you want to keep track of internal processes in an ever-growing company, then SweetProcess allows you to do just that. You can create checklists, share some of the most commonly asked questions and include videos and screenshots all in one place!
– Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media Inc.
3. Existing Tools
It’s tempting to go out and find a new technology for your handbook, but first, look at the tools your team already spends time on. It’s always easier to figure out how to implement a project in an existing tool and get people to use it than to go out and add a whole new tool to your workflow.
– Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting
4. EditMe
As one of the oldest and most popular options, EditMe is used by big businesses globally. It’s easy to use and incorporate, and it’s relatively cheap.
– Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net
5. Google Drive
You can actually use Google Drive, formerly Google Docs, and give the entire company access to share and edit each item. It’s easily organized by adding links to different pages, just like Wikipedia, but it is contained within your own organization.
– Nick Friedman, College Hunks Hauling Junk
6. GitHub and MediaWiki
We use GitHub but have also used MediaWiki and even Google Docs. The best lesson was to take a few hours each quarter with a handful of key staff and weed out the older and irrelevant information, and then ensure the handbook was well organized.
– Kuty Shalev, Clevertech
7. WorkFlowy
WorkFlowy is a great tool for collaborating. It gets your team members on the same page about company policies and processes. It can also be used as a brainstorming tool for different aspects of the handbook, and it’s easy to share aspects of the lists with specific team members or groups, so it keeps the handbook manageable and accessible.
– Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.
8. Confluence by Atlassian
Confluence by Atlassian is a fantastic Wiki or Intranet. Our HR team uses it heavily to host important resources that are regularly updated. It’s one source of the truth, and you don’t have to worry about having an old version or inaccessibility of the files.
– Michael Seiman, CPXi
