Policies and Procedures
Clarity leads to better employee performance, increased employee satisfaction, accountability, and less confusion about responsibilities. When employees can trust and rely on policy and procedure documents they use them. Competent policies and procedures also lower the prospect of employee claims or other forms of corporate conflict. When you must determine cause for holding employees accountable, unambiguous easy-to-understand policies, procedures, and rules are essential tools.
Most organisations have various policy and procedure manuals containing important information for employees who need to access them regularly or even daily. However, employees often ignore these manuals because the information they contain is inaccessible, dense, poorly organised and presented, poorly written and lacking coherent structure. It’s all just too hard! I can transform that much-maligned manual into an easily accessible document that is easy to use.
Clear, well-written procedures and work instructions will ensure your work team has correct and consistent information. Poorly written procedures, on the other hand, can result in stress, poor performance and costly mistakes. They can even put lives at risk.
The boundaries between policy and procedural documents are often blurred, resulting in lengthy, unfocused policies and procedural documents that fail to include important details or are difficult for users to follow.
My method has been developed through research to analyse, organise and present business communications in a format that makes it easy for readers to find and absorb the specific information they are looking for. It is particularly suited to documents that have large amounts of complex, detailed or technical information that requires strict organisation and structure to make it accessible. Policies and Procedures Manuals may include instruction, occupational health & safety, processes, operational, standards, references, training, easy to use forms, and employment.
After all, you want employees working, not wasting time struggling to comprehend what’s expected of them—or wasting everyone’s time because they didn’t bother reading essential information. Well-written, readily understood documents that sufficiently and adeptly explain your company’s policies and procedures are critical management tools, especially in today’s overregulated and litigious culture.
If you want your employees to use your policy manuals, if following procedures properly saves you time, money, and reduces exposure to liability, if you want your documents to be applied in practice, then they must be user friendly, both through streamlined, efficient writing, and through an easy-to-navigate user interface. Think of it this way—a principal benefit of top-notch, functional policies and procedures is happy, productive employees!