Employee handbooks are not typically associated with ghosts, chains, or dramatic transformations — yet perhaps they should be. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol offers one of literature’s most compelling stories about reflection, accountability, and change. For HR leaders and business owners, it provides a surprisingly apt framework for revising outdated policies and inspiring a healthier workplace culture. A Christmas Carol ultimately teaches that change is both necessary and possible.

Updating an employee handbook is an opportunity to refresh policies, support employee well-being and strengthen organizational culture. And, like Scrooge, your organization can emerge with a renewed sense of purpose — one that values people as much as productivity. Because the best workplaces are built not just on rules, but on spirit, compassion, and the courage to evolve.  

As far as I know, Ebenezer Scrooge never actually had an employee handbook in A Christmas Carol. I can only imagine what it would have looked like based on his pre-transformation personality and ghostly HR interventions.

Scrooge and Marley’s Counting House

A Practical Guide to Proper Conduct, Parsimony, and Perpetual Productivity

1. Introduction

Welcome to Scrooge & Marley’s Counting-House. We pride ourselves on our unparalleled commitment to thrift, austerity, and keeping overhead costs lower than the temperature inside the office. You are welcome for your job.

2. Work Hours

• Standard workday: 7 a.m. to long after the candles burn out
• Breaks: None
• Meals: Optional (but not on company time)
• Holidays: Firmly discouraged
  
  • Christmas: A nonsensical interruption to business operations.

‍3. Heating and Comfort

• Employees must warm themselves by:
  
  • Walking briskly while performing tasks
  • Imagining warmth
  • Standing nearer to the candle (only if absolutely necessary)
• BYOC – The Company provides one lump of coal for the fire.  Additional lumps may be brought from home.

4. Sick Leave

• Illness is viewed as:
  
  • A personal inconvenience
  • A sign of moral weakness
  • A preventable expense
• Employees are encouraged to suffer through or recover at their desks.

5. Compensation

• Wages are:
  
  • Barely adequate
  • Calculated to ensure survival, but not comfort
• Raises are subject to:
  
  • A rare cosmic alignment
  • The ending of winter permanently
  • Management developing a heart (unlikely)

6. Office Etiquette

Employees must refrain from:

• Cheerfulness
• Singing (especially carols)
• Discussing family
• Speaking of charity
• Using more light than a single dim candle

Employees are encouraged to:

• Work
• Work quietly
• Work quickly
• Work cheaply

7. Requests & Complaints Procedure

All grievances should be addressed by:

1. Not speaking of them
2. Realizing they will not be accepted
3. Ceasing to have them

8. Holiday Policy

• Christmas Day:
  
  • Time off granted only after a dramatic guilt-inducing argument
  • Employee must come in early the next morning as penance
• Festive attitude: Prohibited

9. Values & Vision

Company Values:

• Money
• Money retained
• Money not spent
• Silence

Company Vision:  A future in which the counting-house’s productivity increases indefinitely while expenditures decrease to zero.

10. Closing Statement

Any employee who behaves in a merry, generous, warmhearted manner will be met with confusion, disdain, or muttered exclamations of “Humbug.”