Writing policies and procedures statements can be difficult.  Nobody likes to research best practices, determine what to say and then write the actual policy or procedure.  So wouldn’t it be nice to have access to a library of policies and procedures?

A comprehensive library that contains hundreds of policies and procedures, along with hundreds of supporting reports, forms, and job descriptions – Over 1,000 documents in all.  A library where all of the procedures have the same format.  A library of editable MS Word templates that you could easily change if you wanted to change them. (more…)

Working with document version control software for your policies and procedures documents does not have to be difficult.  Bizmanualz has created a new document library software product that greatly simplifies the day-to-day management of all of your policies and procedures.

The New OnPolicy Procedures Library incorporates 960 business documents into a single toolbox of helpful “how-to” procedures for the day to day management of any business.  These best practices for the efficient management of any business or company will help your business improve productivity, build operational consistency, and prepare for compliance.

Every department is covered with a brief introduction into how the department function works, a department management manual, and detailed department policies, procedures, and forms.  (more…)

Bizmanualz is the Internet’s Premier online source for premium quality policies and procedures manuals of all types such as accounting, human resources, ISO quality, security, disaster recovery, and more. Bizmanualz is your direct connection to a variety of prewritten MS-WORD procedure templates for industries ranging from manufacturing, non-profit, construction, software development, banking, and medical office to employee handbooks, job descriptions, business forms, and other standard operating procedures.

If you’ve been struggling with writing your own procedures or searching the Internet for samples of policies and procedures, you’ll know that procedures can be expensive to produce but even more expensive to ignore. Bizmanualz offers policies, procedures and software at a fraction of the price it would cost you to develop them yourself or hire someone else to write. This we can do because we have developed a wide range of procedures, either for customers like you or for specific consulting engagements.

Bizmanualz’s goal is to best provide you with top quality service and to help you in creating policies and procedures that allow you to take control of your business growth and maintain confidence in your organization.  At Bizmanualz you will receive quality service with a personal touch, feel free to call us Toll Free at 1-800-466-9953 with any questions you might have searching for that perfect set of standard operating procedures. There is a lot of useful information that we provide on our site but we do understand it could be overwhelming at times. Our customer service representatives are here to go over anything you might have a question with, whether it be for selecting internal controls or developing your employee handbook.

At Bizmanualz, we specialize in providing a complete set of policies and procedures covering every department in your organization. We have long established relationships with business process software vendors, policies and procedures writers, and subject matter experts to bring you a whole solution. Because we are constantly developing new procedures, we make a market for products at prices, which are simply unrivaled. Once one understands the variety of policies and procedures solutions available (different software, books, or custom produced) then one can identify or compose the procedures solution that is appropriate. Please check out the Procedure Solutions page for more information. This will present the full range of different types of procedures products you can choose from to complete your project.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) announced the release of a new Web tool yesterday (May 19), designed to help employers understand their responsibility to record and report work-related injuries and illnesses. This tool promotes compliance with Human Resource (HR) requirements 0f Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations.

Your employee policies and procedures should address HR compliance issues like OSHA recordkeeping. The OSHA Recordkeeping Advisor helps employers and those responsible for organizational safety and health quickly determine:

• Whether an injury or illness is work-related;
• Whether a work-related injury or illness needs to be recorded; and
• Which provisions of the regulations apply when recording a work-related injury or illness.

To help you determine what action(s) to take, the OSHA Recordkeeping Advisor leads you through an online questionnaire. To see the OSHA Recordkeeping Advisor and questionnaire, see www.dol.gov/elaws/osharecordkeeping.htm.

This Advisor is one of a series of online compliance assistance products from OSHA.  The elaws (Employment Laws Assistance for Workers and Small Businesses) Advisor is developed by DOL to help employers and employees understand federal HR employment laws. For a complete list of elaws Advisors, visit the elaws web site at: www.dol.gov/elaws. To learn more about DOL’s occupational safety and health program, visit the OSHA web site at www.osha.gov.  For help with your employee policies and procedures check out the Human Resources Policies, Procedures and Forms manual from Bizmanualz.

The United States Senate gave its approval to a food safety bill, commonly known as “The Food Safety Modernization Act”, last week. The bill has to be reconciled with a similar one that passed the House over a year ago before the President will have anything to sign and the country will, in fact, have a law that specifically addresses food safety. Now, whether the implementation of said bill will actually ensure food safety is another thing altogether…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been in existence for over 100 years — it actually predates the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 — and was begun mainly in response to the proliferation of patent medicines and the often dubious claims people made of them. Food safety was first addressed by the passage of the Meat Inspection Act, which fell under the jurisdiction of the USDA.

Some kind of food safety regulation has been around for more than a century. Yet, while passing various health and food safety legislation for decades, Congress hasn’t actually done much to ensure our protection. They often assign enforcement of food safety laws to the FDA or USDA but the FDA, in particular, has been rendered toothless — ineffective — in recent history as funding for qualified personnel, training, research, and testing have dried up. This typically has the effect of passing the burden (i.e., expense) of ensuring safety on to other parties, such as the consumer. (Don’t believe me? Read the labels on the entrees and side dishes in your freezer.)

Furthermore, food safety standards that are more universal in nature — after all, we’re dealing with a global food supply chain — have been in existence for decades. HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control point) plans –not developed by or for the FDA, incidentally — have been commonplace for nearly forty years because they work!

Food businesses and other organizations (like ISO) have developed a number of easily implemented and universally applicable standards for reducing risks associated with growing, storing, processing, transporting, and consumption of food. ISO 22000 for food safety management systems was released in September, 2005. A complimentary standard, PAS 220 (designed to tighten specifications for food processors’ prerequisite programs, or PRP), was released three years later.

What’s my point? One, that we can’t bank on legislation alone to ensure the safety of the food we consume. The food industry appears to be well ahead of any legislative efforts.

Two, that wherever your company is located in the food supply chain, there are universal standards you can comply with that will ensure the safety of your product no matter where you and your customer are located. Complying with ISO 22000, PAS 220, and similar standards will greatly increase the likelihood that you’re compliant with whatever food safety legislation exists in any locale.

To help you further, Bizmanualz offers its “ISO 22000 FSMS Policies, Procedures, and Forms” manual — one that enables your company to ensure food safety and comply with ISO 22000 requirements with relatively little cost or effort on your part.

So, back to the original question: Is the world safer thanks to regulations like the Food Safety Modernization Act? Do you think more is needed? Or, to put it another way…

What ISN’T being done to ensure food safety?

If you’re naturally risk averse, you probably don’t think this is the best time to consider starting a business. The normal risks you’ll face seem amplified by the currently unsteady economy. On the other hand, if you’re a risk taker, you might think this is a great time to get going, taking advantage of the fact that everyone else is so reluctant to commit themselves.

There are many ways we can deal with business risk. We’re all familiar with the four classical risk management categories:

• Avoidance;
• Mitigation, or reduction;
• Transference; and
• Acceptance.

For example, I don’t gamble often and when I do, I tend to have a minuscule stake in the outcome. I avoid the risk, for the most part. On the rare occasion when I “throw” money at one of the multi-state lotteries, I throw away a dollar or two. I’m mitigating my risk by betting a couple of bucks (at most), because I accept the truism that “the house always wins”.

Here’s another example — insurance for our businesses, as well as our health, homes, and so on. We’re well aware of the fact that we can’t possibly prevent every natural disaster or workplace accident, so we pay insurance premiums to transfer a portion of the risk to the insuror.

Still another example: purchasing and using safety equipment, combined with regular safety training, will significantly mitigate (or reduce) some of the risk of running your business.

Another way to reduce risk? Our business policies and procedures, collectively speaking, are a highly effective risk management tool. Clear, well-written policies and procedures, combined with effective employee training programs, have proven to be among the most effective risk management solutions you can implement.

Of course, if you need help developing effective policies and procedures, you can count on Bizmanualz to deliver. Check out our extensive library of policies and procedures at http://www.bizmanualz.com and let us know how we can be of service.

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So, what are the two or three greatest risks your business is facing today?

What message are you trying to get across in your procedures? To whom? Is your message getting through? How do you know?

“What message am I supposed to get across, besides ‘This is how you’re supposed to do it’?”, you may ask. To that I reply (in the form of a question), “Are we talking ‘procedures‘? Or ‘work instructions‘?”

If the activity is fairly simple:

• There might be more than one way to do it, but none of them is longer than 6-7 steps;
• It doesn’t require a lot of parts, tools, or prep time; and/or
• It’s not being done by a broad, diverse group of people;

we’re talking about work instructions. An example is “loading a smartphone app”:

• Use a search engine to find an app that does what you want;
• Go to a web site that has the app; and
• Download the app and install it on your smartphone.

Many tasks are simple and straightforward so that an employee can be trained in minutes just by showing them how it’s done and letting them do the task repeatedly until they have it right. You don’t need to write a work instruction (or a procedure) when:

• It would take less time to show someone than to write and test a work instruction; and/or
• The risk of failure is minimal (i.e., the probability of failure is small-to-nonexistent, as is its impact).

If you can’t afford the risk, either don’t do it or reduce your risk by documenting the process.

Which brings us to procedures. Procedures are documented processes. The processes may be so complex that they can’t be reduced to a set of work instructions. A process may also consist of a number of processes. The process may cross departmental and/or hierarchical boundaries.

In all cases, it’s important to communicate certain concepts clearly and effectively in your procedures, such as:

• Purpose;
• Roles and responsibilities;
• Scope; and
• The company’s policy on that subject.

If you’re not communicating these points to your intended audience — if your message is being lost in translation — here are some things you can do to help:

1. Add graphical content. If I tell you, “Enter your user name and password and hit [Login]“, you probably know what that means, regardless of what application I’m talking about. But, what if you don’t?

Procedures are primarily designed to train (and retrain) people to perform complex processes and/or processes they don’t perform often. If you’re unfamiliar with logging in, it’d be helpful to you if I showed you what that looks like, wouldn’t it?

(Don’t you love the warmth of that light bulb that goes “on” in your head as you say, “A-ha!”?)

2. Use active voice. It’s more direct. It leaves less room for interpretation. For example, which of the following makes more sense:

• “An internal audit program shall be prepared annually by the lead Quality Auditor before the end of the current calendar year”?, or
• “The lead Quality Auditor shall prepare next year’s interal audit program before the end of the current calendar year”?

3. Write as if you’re talking to one person. Picture yourself trying to teach a procedure to someone who’s not at all familiar with it or the company, like a new hire.

That’s the procedure’s audience and that’s how you should write all procedures — as if it’s just you and the trainee at the computer, machine, etc.

4. Tell your audience “why”. The new hire in #3, above, should have been through a general company orientation — the company’s lines of business, how long it’s been in business, the vision and mission statements, company objectives, etc. — by now. They need all that background to understand how this procedure fits into the grand scheme (that is, how the process helps the company achieve its objectives, or “why they’re learning the procedure”).

If you don’t tell them why, they’re liable to ask themselves at some point, “Why am I doing this?” You may not agree with — or like — the answers they come up with on their own. This may be counterproductive.

5. Simplify, simplify, and simplify. My favorite example is the Swiss Army knife¹. The more expensive variations have nearly every tool you might possibly need. Capable of doing a hundred things, it does none of them well. I’ll take a tool box with me on a camping trip; you bring your Swiss Army knife.

Champ 28 Swiss army knife, by Wenger

Is my kit heavier? Yes! Is it stowable in the glove box?² No! But will your saw cut anything larger or heavier than string cheese? Will your knife cut nylon rope? Will your hammer…wait…you don’t have one. (I will credit you the beer and wine bottle openers, however.)

My point is you should keep your procedures like your tools — simple, functional, and easy to use.

Remember these five techniques for improving your procedures:

1. Add graphical content;
2. Use active voice;
3. Write like you’re talking to an audience of one;
4. Tell the reader “why”; and
5. Keep it simple

…and your procedures will be simple and easy to use, which will improve your workforce’s productivity and morale. So, who’s with me?

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Notes:

¹I’m expressing a personal preference; that’s all. (I can’t see “Dexter” using a Swiss army knife, can you?) However, if Wenger wants to give me a Swiss army knife and show me how to use it, I’m open to that.

²I’m curious: How long have you been driving? Have you ever, in that time, put a pair of gloves in the “glove box” of any auto?

Information technology is changing the way business operates and increasing the need for consistent computer usage, security, and clear policies. Establishing policies and procedures for Information Technology (IT) management issues like:

• Information security;
• Computer usage;
• Network management; and
• IT policy

is now easier than ever using MS-Word templates available in the Computer and Network Policies, Procedures and Forms manual.  The IT manual enables business owners, IT managers, and IT departments to use customizable prewritten documents to protect and control their IT assets.

Easy IT Standards Compliance

Today’s business owners, Chief Information Officers (CIO), Chief Operating Officers (COO) and business leaders are required to comply with various federal regulations and international IT standards (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley, COBIT, ITIL, ISO 27000, ISO 20000). To meet these regulations, companies must demonstrate adequate internal controls of business records, information security, and quality management through effective use of policies and procedures and/or associated document compliance management software.

Computers and IT are important parts of business operations, routinely storing and circulating volumes of information between various business processes.  Many business functions necessitate the use of computer systems and networks. Since businesses and computer systems are increasingly interconnected, the need for controls such as IT policy, information security and computer usage guidelines become equally important.

The “Computer & Network Policies, Procedures, and Forms” manual addresses critical IT management issues and is an invaluable resource for any IT manager or IT department.  It complements our highly successful Accounting Policies, Procedures, and Forms Manual and, when combined, both publications provide a complete compliance solution.

Facilitate IT Management

The Computer & Network (or the IT) Manual provides a framework upon which a company of any size can improve the capabilities of their current IT system, systematically forecast IT needs and budgets, facilitate IT asset management, and resolve IT security issues.

By addressing core IT management issues, this manual helps many small and medium size companies that don’t have an experienced CIO leading the way to formulate best practices and optimal standards to establish a formal IT policy. This is the first publication to identify and provide the guidance and the tools for business leaders to accurately and efficiently determine the hardware, software, training, and security requirements of the organization.

Easy MS-Word Customization

The Computer and Network Policies, Procedures, and Forms Manual discusses strategic IT management issues including IT security, control of computer and network assets, and includes a section on creating your own information systems manual along with a computer and IT security policy guide.  Since all this content is available in editable MS-Word files, you can easily edit and customize the manual to create your own IT policy and corresponding procedures.  View a free sample from the manual today.

“Can I buy just the one procedure I need right now?”

We’ve been hearing this question quite often and our standard response has been that we don’t sell procedures separately. It seemed to make sense that companies should have a range of policies and procedures on hand. After all, everyone thinks in terms of systems of interconnected policies and procedures, don’t they?

Then we thought, “Why not give our customers what they want!” After all, all our policy and procedure manuals have a collection of Microsoft Word files — procedures, policies, and support documents (forms, checklists, etc.). If our customers want to buy the documents individually, why not make it possible?

That’s how www.policiesprocedures.com was born. We essentially took procedure files from seven of our policies and procedures manuals and made them available for sale individually, so now you can buy and download one or more of these 200+ policy and procedure templates from the new website.

If customers could buy individual procedures à la carte, one obvious follow-up question was, “Why would anybody need to buy an entire manual?” Simple — because they get more. Not only more procedures, but supporting content — in short, a system of policies and procedures. In the “real world”, policies and procedures don’t exist in isolation. They interact, as the ISO 9001 points out, simply but eloquently.

Each of our policy and procedure manuals has a section on Manual Preparation, as well as a sample Manager’s Manual (and often a detailed guide or handbook). If you purchase the HR Procedures Manual, for instance, you get 35 HR procedures, a free Employee Handbook, a sample HR Manager’s Manual, links to dozens of Federal HR posters, and more than 50 sample job descriptions!

From a cost-to-value standpoint, once you exceed a handful of procedures (10 or more), it makes sense to purchase the entire manual. However, if you just need a few procedures to fill out your quality system, your accounting system, or any system you have in mind, the new policy and procedure download site may be exactly what you need.

So, visit our new site. Scroll or browse around and buy what you need. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know — we’re more than happy to help!

Lean implementations sometimes get a bad reputation.  Some people think of lean in terms of layoffs, or too much of a focus on the lean tools and not enough on the people side of lean, or perhaps it is just a bad lean implementation.  So what is going wrong with your lean implementation?  Maybe you forgot lean accounting.

So Who Needs Lean Accounting?

You do if you think lean is about cutting costs.  That’s because…

“Lean manufacturing does not cut costs; it turns waste into available capacity.
The financial impact comes as you make decisions on how to use this capacity
(and the cash flow from reduced inventory).”
Brian Maskell, President BMA Inc.

Brian Maskell is an accountant who has written a lot about lean accounting.  The main problem with accounting today is that it was developed to address the mass production costing systems of a century ago.  This traditional accounting system methodology is now outdated as we move from mass production to more individualized and custom production, to virtual production and fulfillment, and to lean manufacturing systems that are designed around manufacturing flow and not around manufacturing scale.

Lean is all about economies of flow, not about antiquated mass production concepts like economies of scale.  Our manufacturing base is evolving.  Old line mass production techniques are moving to China, where long lead times from large-batch production runs are aligned with the long transportation times of sea-based shipping.

In order to compete today, one must evolve into higher throughput manufacturing, greater customization, and increased focus on the customers who prefer to have products when they need them and in the quantity they demand today, not months’ worth of stock sitting idle on the factory floor.

In lean accounting, inventory is considered waste, not an asset.  Labor is a fixed cost, not variable.  In accounting terms, your standard costing methods that treat labor and overhead as depreciable costs are damaging to the real understanding of how manufacturers make money.

Do You Use Metrics that Encourage Wasteful Actions?

Metrics like efficiency of labor, machine utilization, purchase price variance, or overhead absorption variance cause actions like building inventory, running large batches, maximizing earned hours, or purchasing large economic order quantities (EOQ) of raw materials.  Lean is not about reducing costs to increase profits.

Profits are an accounting number — businesses run on cash.  Employees and suppliers don’t get paid in profits, they get paid in cash.  Lean produces cash and increased capacity, that once sold, can be turned into profits.

Without an understanding and implementation of lean accounting methods, your lean implementation is destined to fail.  Lean accounting will help you to understand how your direct costing models are out-of-date, how to see and measure the financial impact of your lean improvement projects, and how to translate the increased capacity brought on by lean implementations into cash.

You can’t really implement lean thinking in any organization without lean accounting.