Finding Policy and Procedure Communities

According to comments we receive from attendees at the conclusion of our two day Well-Defined Processes course, one of the more enjoyable aspects of the course (besides the excellent instruction and great materials!) is the interaction that typically takes place between participants. Exchanging war stories and hearing different perspectives from members of organizations very different from their own can be just as useful as the instruction. This applies not just to our training classes, but to attending external training in general. Sometimes it is important to get people out the organization for a few days in order to see things from a different perspective.

People LOVE to Talk About Policies & Procedures

The topic does generate high interest in our Well-Defined Processes course when we cover the role of policies and procedures relating to processes. What should procedures look like? How long should they be and how much detail should be included? How can we get people to use/follow them? Besides in the Well-Defined Processes class, you can find these topics covered in the Bizmanulz article archive. Even clear writing on this subject, however, isn’t the same as a lively discussion where different experiences, observations, and viewpoints are exchanged.

While external training is still important, the coming of Web 2.0 is making it possible to take part in discussions and exchanges with people from different regions representing all types of organizations – all from your office. Forums that are geared toward various business topics are common on the internet, even policies and procedures.

Most of these forums take a question and answer format. The typical interaction is a posted question and one or a few respondents. Sometimes, however, someone asks a question that will illicit a discussion. People post, then return to read responses, and then they post a reply – sometimes several times. These are always the most interesting threads. And since they are business sites, posts are usually professional and use appropriate decorum. Getting back to policy and procedure forums, let’s do a quick review of some useful sites you might want to check out.

The ISO Quality Forums – http://www.qualityforums.com/

This forum sponsored by the International Standards Organization is geared toward a quality management system complying with standards like ISO 9001 and ISO 14000, with different forums for the various standards. While the topic area is more than just policies and procedures, they are a popular subject, at least in the ISO 9001 area. While activity is not robust, most posts do receive at least one response, even if they are not always timely. Interestingly, however, this site also displays the number of times a posting thread is viewed, and most have views that range in the thousands. So while posting activity might be slow at times, it is a popular site for exploring what others have to say. The policy and procedure questions generally seem to have the most views. It is a very useful site if your organization is complying with an ISO standard.

ASQ Discussion Boards – http://www.asq.org/discussionBoards/index.jspa

There is a category on the American Society for Quality Discussion Boards called Ask A Quality Professional that is very active. The topic of the forum is more about general quality than policies and procedures, but documentation is a common topic.

There are several posts a week here, and each post generates a substantial thread of responses – some fairly immediate and others coming over the course of a few weeks. This can be a very useful place is you have quality responsibilities outside of just policies and procedures. For example, you might like to visit the link below; an interesting thread discussing the requirements for maintaining external documents.
(http://www.asq.org/discussionBoards/thread.jspa?forumID=18&threadID=6187&messageID=114939#114939)

TECHWR-L – http://www.techwr-l.com/taxonomy/term/127

TECHWR-L (known as TechWhirl) is community of technical writers and it addresses a wide variety of technical communication issues. The policies and procedures category (where the above link will take you) is a subset of the writing and editing section. Unlike discussion boards that make up most of this list, TECHWR-L is more like a blog or archive site (much like our own Bizmanualz archive/blog) where posters share a story or a perspective in the form of an article, and others comment on it. Here is place to learn about real world experiences shared by writers facing wide ranging and difficult documentation challenges.

STC Policy & Procedures Group – http://mailman.stc.org/mailman/listinfo/stc_ppsig

The Society of Technical Communication has a listserv section devoted to policies and procedures where members can post or reply to questions. Guests (nonmembers) can view questions and responses, but not post. While this forum is not highly active, posters do tend to receive timely responses to their questions, and this is where you can find some real nuts and bolts type of information on procedure writing. While the site does cover useful topics, one problem is that the STC listserv area is not very user friendly, with an older Web 1.0 style interface. It may take some extra clicking and navigating to find and view particular threads.

Elsmar Cove – http://elsmar.com/Forums/forumdisplay.php?f=16

Elsmar Cove is a very popular forum for business topics, including the section called ” Documentation Systems, Procedures, Forms and Templates” (where the above link will take you). Questions are posted almost daily, and while they receive one or two quick replies, most receive more than ten in a short span of time.

Some threads of high interest stay active for years with an on-going discussion. The number of views a thread receives is noted on this site as well, and some long-lived threads are viewed more than 30 thousand times. For example, one thread where users post places on the internet to find free templates, forms, and samples is still receiving posts after 3-1/2 years and has almost 50,000 views.

LinkedIn Groups – http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory

This has become one of the most popular methods for exchanging information among businesses. There are hundreds of thousands of broad-based and niche groups in the LinkedIn community; the Bizmanualz Policies and Procedures Group is one of them. If you’re not a member of LinkedIn, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities!

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/

Starting out as a social site for university students, Facebook has spread like a brush fire among all age groups. While extremely popular with individuals, it has yet to achieve its potential as a forum for information exchange among the business community. Still, a number of companies — like Bizmanualz — are using Facebook to try to keep in touch with their customers. Do you rely on Facebook for company information?

What Do You Think?

My favorites are the TECHWR-L and the Elsmar Cove sites. You might select a different one as your favorite. We would like to hear your feedback on our list of policy and procedure communities. Which site do you find more useful, more informative, and/or more user friendly? What are you looking for in an on-line community focused on policies and procedures? Are there some useful on-line communities we missed?

Your comments could make the Bizmanualz archive/blog more interactive and discussion oriented. Our mission is to help your business, including effective use of policies and procedures, and we’d love to hear your suggestions and comments on how to improve the Bizmanualz policy and procedure site. You can enter a comment below — or for those of you who receive this article via email, email me directly using the link found at the top of the email.

Happy chatting!

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Posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 under Procedures & Process Training

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Originally published by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title Finding Policy and Procedure Communities.

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.