Companies are using a wide variety of intranet software solutions to develop policies and procedures for multiple departments.  Common policies and procedures software solutions include editing in MS-Word, publishing in PDF, and managing files in SharePoint.  You can try putting most of your information on a wiki, but a wiki can be an inefficient solution for keeping documentation up-to-date and under control.  Adobe has a product called RoboHelp that’s good for maintaining a single source and distributing various versions and revision changes to a mixture of channels. (more…)

If your company is like most, you’re storing your policies and procedures on a file server. Perhaps your working drafts are in one folder, approved versions are in another folder, and previous versions are archived in yet another folder. Some companies will create folders for the different clauses of ISO 9001 or arrange documents according to functional areas or departments. A lot of these companies aren’t even practicing the most basic security techniques, like limiting “read-write” privileges to a select few. (more…)

Policies and procedures need to be managed, not simply collected, as we oftentimes tend to do.  Add in the offspring of policies and procedures — records — and you have the making of a problem common to business…a lack of control.

Control of records and documents is critical to compliance.  ISO 9001 requires document control, record control, and specific procedures that clarify how you are maintaining control.  HIPAA requires access control.  Sarbanes-Oxley requires access and revision control.  Document and record control are at the heart of many of the various compliance schemes businesses encounter. (more…)

Policies are most often rooted in undesired consequences.  Something happens that shouldn’t — a door isn’t secure from the outside and someone gets in your building who doesn’t belong — and a policy (i.e., “That door is for exiting the building ONLY in case of emergencies.  It is NEVER to be used as an entry.”) is enacted.

A few — such as high-level, or corporation-wide — policies are designed to promote desirable consequences for an organization, as well as prevent undesired ones.  In this article, we’re going to stick with the first kind.  In any case, the best policies give everyone in the organization a sense of purpose and direction.  So…how do you write a good policy? (more…)

In part one of this article, you learned the first three steps in the Bizmanualz process of making a policies and procedures manual – research, design and development, and procedure writing.  Now, as Paul Harvey liked to say, “Here’s the rest…of the story.” (more…)

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. (more…)

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 (more…)

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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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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Last week, we established how important process maps are in developing policies and procedures.  In the course of this series, we will present seven types of process maps. This week we will discuss three types: High-Level, Low-Level, and Cross Functional or “Swim Lanes” Maps. (more…)