Sometimes Your Word Isn’t Enough: Find Out Where You Need More Than A Promise in Your Business
We’ve all done it. Made the promise to an employee in good faith or on a handshake with an unspoken understanding of “how things will work.” You needed to keep the bus moving forward, not bog things down with paperwork.
We get it. The paperwork can feel cumbersome sometimes. You want to show you trust your people. The problem though? Sometimes your word, or a handshake, just isn’t enough. In the moment, it feels rock-solid, but things change. People forget the details or the timelines when it’s not written down. Something unexpected happens. Suddenly, you’re left with confusion, resentment, or, worse, legal messes. Just ask your employment lawyer about what termination pay looks like after 20 years of what was thought to be “mutually understood.”
Trust us - documentation matters.
Curious where you stand right now? Then let’s go right to the RW HR Snapshot Quiz and find out.
If you want to know why promises don’t work, then let’s keep going.
The Promise Problem in Real Life
We’ve watched it play out more times than we wish we had to admit to.
Case 1: A founder told two early employees, “If you stick around, there’s a piece of the company for you.” Everyone left that conversation feeling good. Ten years later, the business is thriving, the founder is ready to sell, and suddenly those two employees are waving around emails and memories of what they thought they heard. May we interest you in a conversation with your attorney now?
Case 2: A manager makes a side agreement with a high performer: “Don’t worry about the pay band; we’ll make it right.” HR never hears about it, and their pay never actually catches up. Years later, when that employee compares salaries, they feel cheated, and when word spreads, the rest of the team feels betrayed, too. Or worse, that high performer finally leaves for a salary that translates appropriately to the work they do and the company takes the hit of that loss.
Case 3: A family business runs for decades on nothing but trust. No contracts. No documented policies. The overarching idea that “we’re all family here.” Then one sibling wants out, another wants control, and the “family handshake” isn’t worth much in a courtroom.
Case 4: A construction business prides itself on its safety standards. They think everyone knows what they’re supposed to do and how to react in the event of an emergency, but absolutely nothing is documented. An emergency hits and everything goes sideways. WorkSafeBC comes looking for the signed acknowledgement forms saying these employees were trained on this scenario, and you can’t produce it. Hello, fines and work stoppages.
It’s not (usually) about dishonesty or ill intent. Most employers have the best intentions. Rather, it’s about assumptions. People assume they heard the same thing or that everyone has the same understanding. Companies often assume goodwill will carry the business forward. They assume everyone will feel the same way in five years. But businesses evolve. People evolve. And the promises that once felt generous can start to feel unfair when the stakes shift.
The Biggest Culprits for Promises
Over the years, we’ve seen promises crop up in the same places, especially in small businesses or start-ups:
Compensation Promises
“We’ll bump your pay once the business can afford it.” Sounds fine until “afford it” means different things to different people. Without documentation and a fair process, you risk pay inequities, resentment, or even human rights complaints if it looks like certain employees got better deals.
Especially with BC’s Pay Transparency reporting requirements now including companies with 50 employees or more as of November 1, 2026, getting compensation right has never been more important.Ownership and Succession
Future shares. A verbal agreement about buying out a partner. “Don't worry, this business will be yours one day.” These are the most dangerous handshakes because they collide with people’s life savings, retirements, and family legacies. In provinces like Ontario and BC, succession disputes can grind a business to a halt and potentially destroy it altogether.Policies and Practices
“We don’t need rules; everyone knows what’s fair.” Until one person doesn’t, or until “fair” looks different depending on where you’re sitting. A verbal understanding about vacation carryover, work from home, or overtime pay might feel small, but once someone leaves, you’re dealing with the Employment Standards Act, not just memories. And provincial rules vary. What’s legal in Alberta isn’t necessarily okay in BC.Performance and Promotion
Promises of titles, opportunities, or “next in line” status. Without clarity, you end up with multiple employees who believe they’re being groomed for the same role. Nobody wins.
Why the HR Snapshot Quiz Helps
One of our newest offerings is our HR Snapshot Quiz. It’s intended to be an easy, self-guided quiz that highlights where the gaps might be in your business. From here, we can look at jumping into our HR Health Check to give you a more comprehensive look at your business from HR perspective. This Health Check is designed to shine a light on hidden risks and vulnerabilities and show you how to strengthen your policies, procedures, systems and safeguards. The HR Snapshot Quiz is step one.
The Quiz and the Health Check aren’t about a dusty, performative compliance check or pointing fingers over what’s missing. It’s about surfacing these promises or handshakes and asking the hard question:
Will this hold up when things get messy?
Here’s what you actually walk away with with the HR Snapshot Quiz:
Insight. Is your business in good shape or are there areas you need to focus on?
Honesty. We aren’t going to tell you you’re perfect. We’re going to tell you where you’re doing great and why some areas might need some love.
A Roadmap. Once you get your results and have had a chance to digest, we’re here to host the next step conversation and help you develop the roadmap to getting your HR house in order.
Think of this as step one to future proofing your business. Instead of running on good intentions and crossed fingers, we can help you ensure you have agreements that work today and will make sense five years from now. Agreements that protect relationships, money, and your reputation.
Self Check: Where Do Your Promises Live?
Ask yourself:
Do I have a compensation promise that never made it into a contract?
Do I have a partnership agreement that’s still just “understood”?
Do I have a succession plan that only lives in my head?
Do I have policies that everyone thinks they know, but nobody’s written down?
Pausing on even one of these is a clear sign to take a closer look.
Turning Your Promises into Strategy
The good news is that when you know better, you do better. We aren’t here to play the bad cop (okay, sometimes we are) and make you feel like you’re doing a terrible job. You’re not. You’re here, you’ve read this far, and that means something.
This work is about being fair, clear, and ready for the future. Let’s say we opt for an HR Health Check: we aren’t going to hand you a bunch of generic policies you’ll never read let alone use. We craft a tailored game plan, built explicitly for your business. The outcome is peace of mind with no more lying awake wondering if that promise you made 5 years ago is lurking and about to bite back. No more “we’ll figure that out when we get there.”
We want your business to have clear, documented, sustainable agreements to help your business grow without the weight of old, forgotten promises holding you back.
So, which promises are still floating around in your business? Let’s fix those today. Take your RW HR Snapshot Quiz and let’s get started.