Policies and Procedures YES “ADD VALUE” to Users and Clients

Policies and procedures add value to most companies for a number of reasons depending on the nature of your company’s business, your industry, the certifications sought, and your auditors. Companies that argue that they don’t need anything in writing are very rich and very small or very large, with many layers of politics, and may be doomed to fail.

The purpose of this article is to examine the importance of writing good policies and procedures and how they provide real value to a business.

Good Policies – Add Value

1. Policies provide the strategic direction of the company; Policies provide guidance to the target audience as to the importance of the policy document and/or the policy statements contained in the documents.
2. Policies put the strength or the authority necessary to guide other policies, procedures, work instructions, business processes, and forms that may support the policies and/or be directly affected by the policies.
3. You ask, “How do I know if the document or paragraph I’m reading is a policy?”
4. Policy documents and policy statements will always use absolute types of words like must, require, demand, authorize, prohibit, penalize, fine, rejectetc.
5. If the document is titled “Policy” or if a section within a document is titled “Policy Section” and these strong and authoritarian types of words do not exist, then you should question the source and/or authors of the documents and/or statements.
6. Policies are written in clear, concise, and simple language using a standard writing format template.
7. Policy statements address what the rule is rather than how to implement the rule.
8. Policy statements are readily available and their authority is clear.
9. Policies usually have the approval of a high-level manager and/or the president of a company.

Good Procedures – Add Value

1. Procedures provide the activities, business processes, people, environment, technology, and related documents that help support the strategic direction and advice of the policy.
2. Procedures should be developed with users in mind. Well-developed and thought-out procedures add value to users because the content or information can be used to:
3. Take an action, such as fill out a form for a vacation request or go to a website to change your beneficiary.
4. Confirm understanding of information that may be useful in future situations, for example, if the Company says it will fire an employee for any kind of violence, then the employee has information about what to avoid doing.
5. Serve as a reference to another policy or procedure document or as a reference during a meeting or other discussions, for example, if the procedure contains information about employee sick leave, then a group meeting could refer to this procedure.
6. The procedures should be representative of the thoughts and ideas of the users, or at least they should be; In other words, an experienced how-to writer knows how to include input from top users to ensure buy-in and champions are available to help how-to writers communicate new or revised how-tos to specific audiences.
7. The procedures have a clear meaning, are free of complex jargon and are easily understandable. Procedures should be written so that all users can easily follow what needs to be done.
8. Procedures often provide references to the correct forms to use when completing one or more actions reflected in the procedure. In some cases, a copy of the form may be placed in the annexes to the proceedings.
9. Where feasible, procedures should offer alternatives to the user; readers may overlook or ignore procedures that are unnecessarily restrictive or difficult to read.

Soon,

1. With written policies and procedures, management can make consistent decisions, and employees can be sure that consistent decisions will be made about what is important to them.
2. Without written policies and procedures and/or poorly researched and designed policies and procedures, management can run the “wild west” and make any decision it pleases and employees will have to place all their trust in this management.