This handbook is part of your employment agreement. That is deliberate — we would rather write down how things actually work here than keep the real rules somewhere you cannot see them. It does mean that changing a page can change what you are owed, so it is worth being clear about how that happens.

Who owns it. The People Handbook Author keeps this handbook accurate, brings in changes in the law, and is the person to ask when a chapter does not match what you are experiencing. Anyone can propose a change, and most of the good ones come from someone noticing that a chapter has stopped describing reality.

Two kinds of chapter. Most of what is here describes how we do things. Some of it describes what you get, or what you owe, in return for your salary. The test is whether you can derive an entitlement or an obligation from it.

Policy is how we work. We update it when we learn something better.

Terms of employment are what you are owed. We do not change those on our own. A proposal goes to the People Context Rep first, our works council, who weighs it on everyone’s behalf. Anything that changes what you personally are owed is agreed with you before it applies.

Very rarely, something has to change that we cannot leave as it is — the law moves, or the company’s situation does. If that happens we say what changed, why we could not avoid it, and what it means for you. It is the exception, and it is meant to stay one.

Which is which. These chapters are terms of employment:

Compensation procedures · Contract Renewals · Benefits · Expenses and reimbursements · Time off · Becoming a parent at Luscii · Unable to work · Working remotely · Moonlighting · Leaving Luscii

Everything else is policy. Two of those are worth a word. Health & safety we can update, but only ever to make it stronger — keeping you safe at work is a duty, not a choice. And Moonlighting is on the first list for a reason that is easy to miss: it sets out what side work is fine, and your employment agreement points at it when it comes to what you make outside Luscii. Narrowing that page would take something away from you, so we do not narrow it on our own.

One route worth naming. Relational agreements lets you ask for an agreement to be written into this handbook when it should hold for everyone. That lands in policy. If what you are proposing carries an obligation for people, it takes the same route as any other change to terms of employment: discussed and agreed, not simply published.

If you work in the UK. You are employed through Oyster, so your terms live in your Oyster contract and in UK law, not in this handbook. The lists above are about Dutch employment agreements. Everything else here — how we work, how we decide, what we expect of each other — applies to you exactly as it does to everyone.

When something changes, you will see it in #luscii-we-at-luscii-changelog: what changed, why, and from when. You should not have to discover a change by tripping over it.

If you think a chapter is on the wrong list, say so. Getting this wrong in either direction costs something — either we are slow to fix what should be easy to fix, or we change something you were counting on.