A policy is a written description of an organisation's stance on particular subjects and its response to specific situations.
Policies guide managerial decision making when these situations are encountered and should help the company achieve its objectives. Policies help bridge the gap between principles, and practical gains. Procedural guides are a much more detailed version of Policy.
Policies are a guide only. They leave discretionary power to the manager who interprets the Policy. How the manager ensures that objectives are met, is up to them; policy suggests, but does not assert.
Having a written Policy helps promote consistency in responses by providing a common reference point. This prevents disputes which might otherwise arise because of inconsistent treatment, or because of different opinions of how the organisation should respond to a situation.
Policies should always be kept brief and general, so that their readers are encouraged to remain creative and inventive. To require everyone to responds to particular circumstances in identical ways would mean that nothing would ever be learnt and an organisation would never get better at doing what it does. In this sense, Policy is constantly written and rewritten as new and unforeseeable circumstances arise. Another contributor to policy is when different approaches are experimented with, and these approaches eventually become widely adopted.
Procedural guides are a much more detailed version of Policy. They describe, step by step, how Policies should be implemented. There are two types of Procedures:
Guides - suggested approach
Rules - compulsory approach.
Generally, Policy is for managers, while Procedure is for employees.
Written Policies and Procedures are usually proportional in size and depth to the organisation that they are written for. Very small organisations, for instance, may not even have Procedures or Policies.
You may be required to write Policies and Procedures in the following situations:
You are in a newly formed company.
A situation that has not been encountered, is anticipated or experienced.
Old Policy proves to be obsolete, and new policies or Procedures must be written.
There are three simple rules that should be followed when writing Policies and Procedures. These are to:
1. Leave nothing unsaid
Things that you will need to mention are:
2. Abide by a standard format
Standard formats make reading and writing policies and procedures easier for other staff. An example of a standard format is:
Policy
Procedure
3. Consider the reader
Things you will need to keep in mind when writing for your audience are to:
Analyse who will be reading the Policy or Procedure
Describe each step in fewer than three sentences, and fewer than twenty-five words
Have no more than ten words per sentence
Write for the lowest common denominator. That is, write for the least experienced or least educated member of your audience.