Keys to Developing your Policies and Procedures Manual

7 Crucial Steps to Developing Procedures:

Purpose

To develop procedures, you need to ask yourself some questions like: what’s the main goal of the procedure? Do you need the procedure? What are some of the problems that the procedure will help you solve?  

Policy

You should ask yourself the type of policy you want to be carried out in your policies and procedures manual.

Clarity

Also referred to as directness or simplicity, it means that you shouldn’t add a lot of twisted logic or verbiage in your policy and procedures manual. Instead, include those that will be involved in the process of how it works and what to be expected of them.

User Involvement

When developing your policies and procedures manual, remember that the person developing your manual may not have experience on how the process works. The writer doesn’t necessarily need to be experienced because they just need the right answers some questions. Can writers get the process owner to be able to describe the process? Are they able to convey the information received accurately and clearly? When the process owner explains the situation, he looks at the process from a very different angle, and sometimes they may even ask, “Should we be doing this?” The writer and process owner should be full participants for them to come up with the best result. 

Feedback and Control

Your policies and procedures manual should be similar to the Plan-Do-Check-Act model. If you don’t measure performance or analyze measurements, how will you determine if your policy and procedure manual is in control? How will you tell that you’re achieving your goals, or determine the next step to take if you don’t measure? It’s almost impossible to improve your process if you don’t gather feedback and act on it.

Continual Improvement

Don’t waste your time writing or rewriting your procedure to perfection. This is because no process is perfect. Therefore, implement the procedure, check, improve, implement the improvements, and repeat the process again.

Accuracy

Your procedure should have everything your employees need to perform different processes correctly and with consistency. Don’t leave important information or steps when developing procedures manual.