Making Policies and procedures Work

A common problem organizations face is compliance to policies and procedures especially in the fast-paced world. Sometimes the procedures are quite long, making it difficult for employees to read and follow them. The biggest risk is that you have complex, unreadable and boring procedures.

Another challenge is that nobody is following your procedures. When employees use procedures regularly, they will notice when things are outdated and alert you. Revisions help you ensure you have effective procedures in place.

What Challenges Exist within your Employees?

Sometimes your team has no access to procedures, often assuming you have no policies and procedures document in place. Your procedures could be too broad, too complex or too simple, failing to offer specific instructions on different operations. Your employees will also not use generic, confusing, inconsistent or poorly written procedures.

Quality procedures complement your training efforts, especially for novice employees who may have to refer to them repeatedly until the processes become second nature. Seasoned employees may refer to them periodically and can help in reviewing and updating the procedures.

Making your Policies and procedures Work

Creating policies and procedures that work requires careful attention to the following:

1. Take advantage of technology to keep your procedures up to date with blogs, wikis, intranets, document management systems, internal software and new knowledge management systems.

2. Create procedures that are direct to the point, concise and clear.

3. Make use of visual aids such as graphics and pictures.

4. Offer a system that employees can access with ease, with search aids, that is available online.

5. Make the procedures readily available where they are most applicable.

6. Reinforce ISO guidelines that require revision control as part of the day-to-day job.

7. Get rid of procedures that are too generic.

8. Update the procedures regularly and make sure they are useful.

9. Use a simple, common and easy-to-use read format on the documents.

10. Start an organizational culture that emphasizes on following procedures by involving the employees who have to follow the procedures in the development of the company and policies procedures that guide their daily activities.