Do You Really Have to Write Procedures?

Not all processes require procedure writing.  There’s a lot of overhead associated with every business procedure you write.  Therefore, the more business procedures you write, the more procedures you have to edit, implement, train, audit, and review.  Only company policies and procedures required by standards, regulations, or company strategy must be developed.

Required Policies Procedures

Only company policies and procedures required by standards, regulations or company strategy must be developed.  ISO 9001 requires only six procedures, so why do many companies feel they need to write 40 or more procedures to achieve control?  Occasional users need procedures as a reminder of procedure steps that they do not perform very often.  Frequent or regular users do not need, and often times do not use, the procedure.  So how are those other 34-plus procedures used?  Most procedures are used to train infrequent users.  For training purposes you may only need a process map.  Are you using your procedures to make up for a weak training program?

Your Policies Procedures Template Design

When you do write procedures you will need to standardize on a procedure template design.  Start your policies and procedures template design by thinking through your document and record control procedures.  Your procedure template design should make room for a header block to ensure your procedure communicates your purpose and scope.

Add a Title, Policy, Purpose, Scope, Responsibility, and Definitions section to help people understand your procedure. Clear department responsibilities identify who does what and helps to declare which positions are mentioned in your procedure with a synopsis of what is expected for each position. Key term definitions reduce confusion; industry jargon should be explained in the definitions section of your procedure to help new procedure users.

Writing Policies Procedures

Before you start writing procedures from scratch, look around for examples, or templates, that you can copy.  Pre-written procedures will speed up your development, reduce your research time, and turn writing procedures into editing procedures.  I’ve found it’s a lot easier to edit a procedure than to write one from scratch, depending on the procedure.  Many procedures are really common using business best practices, so why reinvent the wheel?

If you have to write a procedure from scratch, start writing procedures using active voice construction to reduce task confusion. Subject, verb, object provides clear active voice construction for your procedure.  For example, “Accounts Receivable invoices customers” is clearer and contains fewer words than “customers are invoiced by Accounts Receivable.”  The extra “are” and “by” make the sentence longer, put the subject last, and force the reader to stop and reread the action.  Be direct and to the point — use the active voice.

Add references to related documents to improve your procedures’ usability.  Clearly note when your procedure refers to other procedures or forms.  There’s nothing worse than following a procedure and coming to a passage that refers to a company form and…that’s it. You don’t know what the form looks like, where you might find it, or what version of the form you need.  Putting an example of the form, with an explanation, in the procedure will save you and your users time during procedure training and implementation.

List applicable laws or regulations: clearly communicate your company’s need for compliance.  If you’re implementing a records retention procedure, references to IRS or equal employment opportunity (EEO) passages, for example, provide a brief synopsis and help you implement your procedures.

How to Write Policies and Procedures

Policies Procedures Overhead

Large organizations have a large number of procedures.  They have a lot of staff, business operations, and economy of scale to make their procedures work.  Smaller businesses should remember — the more business procedures you write, the more business procedures you have to edit, implement, train, audit, and review.  More procedures may also produce more audit findings in addition to more updates, more documents to control, and more administration overhead.

Many companies fail to plan for this administration and procedure overhead, so it should come as no surprise that their procedures don’t work as well as expected.  Every procedure becomes outdated, eventually.  Also, due to infrequent maintenance and use, some procedures are overlooked when it’s time to update them.  This can result in repeated procedure audit findings or, worse, repeated waste, fraud, and abuse which the procedures were intended to reduce.

The lean thinking solution is (a) to write only procedures that you absolutely have to write to conform to requirements and (b) to improve your training program to build competent and skilled employees instead of writing procedures you don’t have the time or budget to maintain.

Next week, we’ll cover policies and procedures implementation and training.  It’s much easier to comply with standards and train employees when you’re working with written procedures.  If you’re interested in learning more about your procedures, call or e-mail us for a procedure review of your written procedures.  We’re happy to provide feedback on what you’re using and tell you how you can improve your processes.

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Posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 under Business Management & Operations, Process Management, Writing Policies and Procedures

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Originally published by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title Do You Really Have to Write Procedures?.

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