Formatting your Procedures and Policies Manuals

Your policies and procedures manual will be taken seriously and referred to by employees regularly if you attractively format them.

Information is communicated through Procedure Manuals.

A business manual is meant to inform a reader at the right time and resourcefully as opposed to impressing him/her with elegant modes of printing and complicated headings. A simple format is usually the best. Cost efficiency and more time can be attained an operating procedure which is simple and can be cast-off as a common manual format. Logos, double sided copies, large paper patterns, a lot of details and limiting binding techniques should be avoided.

Procedure Manual Plan

The plan is the first aspect of learning how to format your policy and procedure manual. By reviewing the preliminary listing of procedures and policy with all employees assigned in each section, you should be able to decide the approximated length and usage of your policy and procedure.  From the requirement of your company and the instructions from this publication, you can select the format of your policy and procedure reports and how you will establish the manual into sections.

Using single side printing provides an easy duplicate of other papers, and the manual can easily be updated. For an easy finding of a particular statement, the sections should be used to separate departmental and functional areas.

Procedure manual style

Paper

You can use colors to entitle various forms, memos, manuals, among other. Even if colors can create an attractive appearance, they can, however, complicate photocopying or printing. The grade of paper is not significant. Therefore a weightier weight paper can be necessary if a two-sided paper is used.

Type style

Strange type style and artwork should be evaded and strive for reliability in general appearance of the whole policy manual regardless of where it originates from.

Print quality

Avoid using photocopy reductions, small prints, all-capital prints of decorative script style because they are difficult to read. Provide adequate margin on the page.

Attractive procedure manual format

Policy and procedure manual that is eye catching and emphasize the importance of the policy and procedure is likely to be taken seriously and read by the employees to accomplish their tasks.