Policies and procedures are essential for any company from the start. You can think of them as guiding documents that clearly describe your company’s best practices, values, and operational standards. By defining these properly, you cut down on a lot of ambiguity and keep your company professional and organized.
Below, we’ll explain to you how exactly policies and procedures work, including their different types. We’ll also walk you through a step-by-step process for writing them, complete with handy resources.
What are policies and procedures?
Policy and procedures detail the way a company or organization should be run.
Policies are high-level statements that direct the “what and “why” of the company. The CEO, president, or board of directors usually writes them. They’ll lay down rules and standards here based on the organization’s mission and values, setting the stage for the direction of the company.
On the other hand, procedures outline how exactly to implement policies, in the form of detailed, step-by-step instructions. They include standardized workflows where you make it clear who’s responsible for which steps.
For exaample:
- Policy: The company is committed to providing a safe and healthy work environment for all employees.
- Procedure: Employees should report any workplace hazards or injuries to their manager right away. Place first aid kits in the break room, copy room, and on each floor. There should also be specific plans for emergency situations, like fires.
Here’s a summary of their differences:
Together, policies and procedures work hand in hand so employees are aware of exactly what is expected of them. It’s an expected practice to write down policies and procedures clearly, often in a manual, then introduce them to employees during onboarding.
Benefits of policies and procedures
A report from Harvard Business Review suggests improving efficiency by making sure all employees know what they need to do in their daily work. Policies and procedures aim to do exactly that, ensuring consistency across departments and locations. This can help reduce errors and increase efficiency.
They also act as a decision-making and strategic guide for your company. Employees can always refer to them in new situations. This is especially relevant when the company has to scale or expand into new markets. After all, having clear policies and procedures can prevent contradictory decisions.
Common types of policies in organizations
Let’s take a quick look at the types of policies that companies usually have. These are just a few:
- Code of conduct – Outlines the expected behavior and ethical standards for all employees, including professional conduct and conflicts of interest
- Human resources – Covers areas like hiring and onboarding, compensation and benefits, performance management, employee leave, and termination procedures
- Information security – Sets guidelines for protecting the organization’s sensitive information and data, including data access, storage, and handling
- Health and safety – Ensures a safe working environment for employees by addressing safety measures, accident prevention, and emergency response procedures
- Diversity and inclusion – May cover topics like equal opportunity, non-discrimination, and employee resource groups
- Financial – Establishes guidelines for financial management, including budgeting, spending approvals, expense reimbursement, and financial reporting
- Customer service – Defines the organization’s approach to customer engagement, such as service standards, complaint handling, and customer privacy
- Environmental – Shows the organization’s commitment to environmental sustainability through strategies like reducing waste and improving energy efficiency
How do you write effective policies and procedures?
Policy and procedure manuals can take a long time to develop and perfect. But you can expedite the experience by following these steps in writing them:
Step 1: Prepare to write
First, treat the activity like a project and ensuring you get management support. That way, time and resources will be available to you. Because policies and procedures often involve legal and regulatory consequences, you need to consider having documents reviewed by legal counsel.
Step 2: Have a clear understanding of what your company’s policies are.
Having a vision for your company is vital to keeping the project focused. This vision helps you craft an appropriate template for your field or industry that will help you gain a better understanding of what content you need to add.
Step 3: Write your documents
To write your documents, start by reading current policies and procedures if any exist, and review any compliance or regulatory guidelines that apply. It’s essential to consult the people who will use the procedures and perform the work, so they understand the steps in a workflow, especially when creating procedures.
Similarly, consulting employees on the creation of documentation is one of the best methods for ensuring their interest in and use of procedures.
Step 4: Implement the policies and procedures
To encourage the success of a document, plan its implementation. Publish the document in one central location, such as on a company website, and employees should sign and send alerts when they have read the document to verify retention.
Step 5: Create a training plan to support the new policies and procedures
Then, establish a review cycle so that new regulations and practices can be incorporated into your documents to keep them relevant.
Tips for making your policies and procedures easily executable
When you’re writing a policy or procedure template, you want to make sure it’s easy to read, understand and follow. Here are some tips for making your template as clear and helpful as possible:
1. Pick the right template
It’s important to choose a policies framework that is specific to those fields. For example, if your company works in the finance industry and you need to create a policy that keeps track of all your employees’ expenses, then you should choose an appropriate template for your field or industry.
The same thing goes for quality and safety management. In this case, it’s important to choose a template that works best for your company.
You can choose from any of these policies and procedures templates that we’ve curated or create your own using Lumiform’s AI form builder.
2. Keep it brief
If you can fit all of the information on one page, then it’s highly recommended. It’s easier on the reader’s eyes and your team will be able to find what they’re looking for faster. If you need more space than one page, use bullet points to break up long paragraphs without making the document look too complicated or intimidating to help new hires get started quicker.
Adding headers is also ideal if you want to let readers know what type of content they’re about to read before they even start reading it so they can decide whether or not this document is relevant to them right away. They don’t need to scroll through everything before finding out what’s important to do in this task.
3. Track the system
For example, if you’re working in quality management and safety, there are several different types of templates available. However, choosing one that has been customized for your industry or field will ensure that it contains all the information you need for your policies and procedures.
4. Avoid using jargon
Use language and tone appropriate to your audience. For example, writing policy and procedure documents for a manufacturing company would have a different language than one for a retail company or an educational institution.
Use terms and definitions consistently throughout your document. This helps readers understand what each term means when they see it in multiple places throughout the document.
If there are any terms that are unique to your organization or industry, define them at the beginning of the document. This way, people don’t have to look up what they mean later on in the text if they don’t already know them.
It also helps to explain acronyms where appropriate. Readers then won’t get confused about what terms like “ISO 9001” mean when they see it again later.
5. Make the tone fit
Make sure the tone fits with the purpose of your policy or procedure. For example, if you’re writing policy and procedure documents on fire safety, you don’t need to use overly formal language.
You should also consider who will be reading it – if it’s someone who has never worked for your company before, then using plain language will help them understand what they need to do and why it is important.
Why use templates for policies and procedures?
When creating policies and procedures, it’s common to use a template or predetermined layout for efficiency. This way, you can simply fill it out and get a polished, organized document. Here are the benefits:
- They help solve urgent business problems quicker and error-free.
- They reduce the time and effort that would you would otherwise spend on drafting a policy and procedure manual.
- They keep all policies and procedures in one place, which makes them easy to find.
- They boost employee work efficiency.
- They help in planning, organizing, and creating a formal structure for each project.
- They keep track of tasks and milestones, assign resources, set deadlines, and generate reports from any task or project within minutes using earned value analysis reports.
- They capture and store all important information about a task or project using a built-in CRM that allows you to easily track your progress.
- They show you how much work has been completed on each task so far compared to its budgeted cost at completion (BAC).
You can find several types of policies and procedures templates on Lumiform, then customize them based on your company’s preferences and requirements.
Upgrade outdated policies and procedures with Lumiform
Lumiform simplifies all the complex steps of optimizing policies and procedures templates by offering first-rate features that help you:
- Create policies and procedures with the world’s most intuitive inspection and audit app in the market.
- Execute powerful solutions and reports on your policies, procedures, and training 4x faster across various areas of your operations to see how your staff are performing.
- Identify and reduce errors before they occur by providing real-time feedback about the status of each item on your list.
- Track progress on projects by writing policy and procedure documents from Lumiform templates that address your most urgent business pain points.
- Manage your quality management system using Lumiform’s methodologies that are already trusted by leading companies in all industries.
- Simplify the work of people who are involved in quality management systems compliance.
- Ensure your team follows through with tasks without needing constant supervision or reminders from you or others in your organization.
Deliver policy and procedure templates that meet the needs of your workforce to reach 100% compliance with industry standards.