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What's the Difference Between Policies and Procedures?
We talk about policies and procedures all the time but you may be wondering what is a policy and how does it differ from a procedure?
What’s A Policy?
A policy is a guiding principle used to set direction in an organization. It can be a course of action to guide and influence decisions. It should be used as a guide to decision making under a given set of circumstances within the framework of objectives, goals and management philosophies as determined by senior management. But is it?
There are really two types of policies. The first are rules frequently used as employee policies. The second are mini-mission statements frequently associated with procedures. Think rules versus missions.
Employee Policies
An employee policy is a business rule you put in your Employee Handbook. This includes things like no smoking, no drinking, and other business practices like dress codes, vacation policy, or your company’s codes of conduct. Clearly, employee policies are human resource policies about your office rules used to support your management philosophies.
Employee policies are used to set a standard for projecting your company image or to communicate regulations that apply to all personnel. What kind of image are you projecting as a company? They typically come from top management as a result of interpreting the company mission and vision statements, laws and regulations, or industry standards and practices.
Procedure Policies
Think of your procedure policy as a mini-mission statement. A mission statement contains the target user, the stated purpose, and some type of effectiveness measure to communicate how users know the procedure is working.
An example Inventory Counting Procedure Policy:
Warehouse personnel shall count physical inventory on a frequent basis to ensure the accuracy of the general ledger balance.
In the inventory counting policy you see the target user is the warehouse personnel. The stated purpose is to count inventory and the effectiveness measures are frequency and accuracy. The procedures will need to define the actual frequency and accuracy amounts. In fact, the amounts could be objectives for process improvement if there are inventory issues.
What’s A Procedure?
A procedure is a particular way of accomplishing something. It should be designed as a series of steps to be followed as a consistent and repetitive approach or cycle to accomplish an end result. Once complete, you will have a set of established methods for conducting the affairs of your organization, which will come in handy for training, process auditing, process improvement, or compliance initiatives.
You can view free sample procedures at our samples section.
Procedures provide a platform for implementing the consistency needed to decrease process variation, which increases procedure control. Decreasing process variation is how we eliminate waste and increase performance.
The Difference Between Policies and Procedure
A policy is a guiding principle used to set direction in an organization. A procedure is a series of steps to be followed as a consistent and repetitive approach to accomplish an end result. Together they are used to empower the people responsible for a process with the direction and consistency they need for successful process improvement.
More questions? Learn how to improve your organization by attending the next How to create well-defined processes or the NEW 4-Day ISO 9000 QMS Lead Auditor training class.
Part 1: How Do You Gain Control of Your Processes?
Part 2: Writing Procedures for Results
Part 3: Who are Procedures Written for?
Part 4: What’s the Difference Between Policies and Procedures?
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This and more articles like this can be found at www.bizmanualz.com. This article may be reprinted freely as long as this resource box is left intact.
December 13th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
My job is to evaluate an organization’s compliance with statutory instruments, and to assess effectiveness of individual procedures. In almost all cases when dealing with government, I see few policies and many procedures. When I recommend a policy framework to govern the overall procedures, the response is always ‘why’? I have many answers for them, but none that resonate enough to generate activity in this area. I am looking for a powerful message on the reason policies are necessary (in addition to procedures). I am not looking for a general statement (I have many of those I can draw from), but real-life reasons. Can you help?
December 14th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
For a real-life example, look at governmental response to Hurricane Katrina. The lack of a clear, cogent policy – which would have served to coordinate federal, state, and local relief and rebuilding efforts – has resulted in massive waste, fraud, dissatisfaction, and finger pointing. The lack of positive results has only added to the average citizen’s impression that government is, at best, incompetent.
Now, the organization you work for may never have to deal with anything of that magnitude (I hope). But in any organization, policy answers the question, “Why do we do what we do?” Procedures only tell us what to do – without policies to guide them, procedures are unlikely to be effective or relevant to the organization.
October 6th, 2007 at 3:08 am
Policies are the set of rules to be followed & procedures are the steps to follow in an organization. employees are bound to be followed the policies of company & appropriate action to be taken if some one found to be brake any policy. Procedures are the set of instruction & employee can tailor procedures as required.
November 20th, 2007 at 3:48 am
i’ve indeed benefitted a lot from these series on procedures because my job is to document and implement procedures in my organisation. but my problem now is drawing the line between procedures, instructions and user/operating manuals. can you help me with that? thanks
December 30th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Very intresting above statement.
i have planned to control internal audit inside my organisation in one of the department (Sales)
can you give me some guidelines on why we are conducting audit?
August 18th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I have just browsed through your articles on polices and procedures. They are really good. I am pastor of a church and is much concerned with the organizational functions. In most cases, especially in Indian situation, there is complete chaos and confusion resulting not only in organizational degradation but also establishing a firm ground for favoritism and nepotism. I would like to know whether you have any training programs conducted on this subject. If so when and where and the cost involved. Thank you.
Rev. J. Bavani Rajan
October 6th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I chanced upon your explanation of policies and procedures. I am really impressed. Many a time we know that there is a difference; but fail to put the subtle distinctions in writing. Very well done.
January 27th, 2009 at 5:35 am
[...] A policy is a guiding principle used to set direction in an organization. It can be a course of action to guide and influence decisions. It should be used as a guide to decision making under a given set of circumstances within the framework of objectives, goals and management philosophies as determined by senior management (Source: Bizmanualz) [...]
April 12th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
What is the diffrence between Standard and Procedure?
April 13th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
A standard is what you organization wants to achieve: It is a target or objective. ISO produces standards that organizations can target. A procedure is a description of the process and methods used to achieve the standard. Some people use the terms interchangeably, but I think there’s a big difference.
August 19th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Very interesting and clearly a question which is continually asked. My question is where do Processes fit in – are these just Procedures under a different name? If so why does ISO speak use both Processes and Procedures?
August 30th, 2010 at 9:12 am
All businesses have processes. A procedure is the written documentation that describes a process. ISO only requires six procedures or processes to be documented. Yes, ISO does require that you define or describe your processes (clause 4.1) but that does not mean they must be described in a procedure. A written description or process map in your quality manual will suffice.