Writing Policies and Procedures
Articles in the "Writing Policies and Procedures" Category
A lot of work goes into developing every Bizmanualz Policies and Procedures manual. We start by conducting…
1. Subject Research
In the not-too-distant past, we primarily searched the Internet for clues as to what people wanted. We’d find what topics people were interested in by doing the same thing you do: searching by keywords.
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Author: Steve Flick Published on: December 14th, 2009
Categories: Business Process Improvement, Writing Policies and Procedures
You’ve just been given the task of writing a new procedure that documents an existing business process. You make sure you understand, and you close with, “I’ll get on this process right away.”
That’s when your boss says, “Process? Did I say ‘process’? I meant processezzz! Plural!” And before you can blurt out, “What do you mean?”, the boss says you need to develop procedures for all accounting processes, not just the one. Oh, and he wants them by the end of the month!
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Author: Chris Anderson Published on: November 20th, 2009
Categories: Accounting Procedures Manuals, Case Studies, Writing Policies and Procedures
Writing procedures is an exercise in controlling the cost of compliance. You’re trying to comply with customer expectations, management objectives, government regulations, and/or industry standards, making compliance expensive. Regardless of the reason for compliance, wouldn’t you want to write as few procedures as possible if you could still conform to the compliance mandate and keep your compliance costs to a minimum?
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Author: Chris Anderson Published on: November 16th, 2009
Categories: Accounting & Internal Control, Internal Control, ISO Quality Standards, Sarbanes Oxley Compliance, Writing Policies and Procedures
You’ve written a new procedure. Your procedure review identified completeness, correctness, and subject matter applicability. You feel you’ve caught your procedure writing errors and the procedure’s ready to go…but go where? How do you determine if your new procedure is working?
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Author: Chris Anderson Published on: October 26th, 2009
Categories: Procedures & Process Training, Process Management, Writing Policies and 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
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Author: Chris Anderson Published on: October 19th, 2009
Categories: Business Management & Operations, Process Management, Writing Policies and Procedures
Your process is not living up to expectations, so you’ve decided to implement standard operating procedures (SOP) to improve process consistency, compliance, and effectiveness. However, that project is stalled: employees are not buying into your proposed changes, and management is growing impatient.
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Author: Chris Anderson Published on: October 12th, 2009
Categories: Business Process Improvement, Process Management, Writing Policies and Procedures
Business and organizational development is about business process change: not as in “process change – the event”, but “process change – the journey“. Your business processes change in response to market forces, competition, regulations, customer demand, the economy, culture, personal beliefs, and many other factors. The question isn’t about what is causing the business process changes — we know your business processes are going to change — the question is…
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Author: Chris Anderson Published on: October 5th, 2009
Categories: Business Process Improvement, Procedures & Process Training, Writing Policies and Procedures
We always start our Well-Defined Processes Class by asking the participants “what’s wrong with your policies and procedures where you work?” and we always get the same answers. Students come to the class from different industries, companies, and geographies and yet we still get the same answers every time.
People tell us how hard it is to keep their procedures up-to-date. Information gets stale fast and it is difficult keeping procedures current and relevant without becoming outdated. One reason for this is that the procedures are too long in the first place. If you have a 35-page procedure then, yes, it is difficult to keep all 35 pages up-to-date. Especially, if the procedure is unclear, overly complicated or just too difficult to understand in the first place.
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Author: Chris Anderson Published on: June 19th, 2009
Categories: Writing Policies and Procedures
Historically, compliance has been the focus of most knowledge management systems. Documenting business processes with policies and procedures is required by many standards such as for ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems, Sarbanes Oxley Accounting and Finance, or Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But if we look closer at the intent of these standards then we see that we should be more concerned with control, to improve quality or reduce the risk of failure.
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Author: Chris Anderson Published on: June 12th, 2009
Categories: Internal Control, ISO Quality Management, Sarbanes Oxley - SOX, Writing Policies and Procedures
Everywhere in your organization people are carrying out business processes to make things happen. It doesn’t matter if the processes are well defined, poorly documented or if the staff is trained. If things are getting done – it is because people are executing business processes.
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Author: Editor Published on: December 22nd, 2008
Categories: Accounting Procedures Manuals, Business Process Improvement, Writing Policies and Procedures
