How can you make your policies and procedures work? Customers and readers alike tell us how difficult it can be to keep their policies and procedures up to date. Due to the ever-increasing rate of change, your policies and procedures can get “stale” (ineffective) very fast. What else goes wrong with procedures?
There are a lot of reasons for people not following procedures. Here are some of the most common.
One reason for this might be that your standard operating procedures (SOP) are too long. If you have 35-page-long procedures — especially if that’s all text — it’s probably not fair to expect your employees to understand, let alone use, them. At that length, there’s the very real risk that your procedures are unclear, overly complicated, and just plain boring. Keeping procedures short and under seven pages will help in understanding and usage.
Another reason procedures may not be up to date is that they’re not followed. If your people were using the procedures as written and taught, they’d be more likely to notice when things are out of date or out of sync with other company practices. Revisions are a healthy indicator of ongoing use and revisions help to create effective procedures. If procedures that are written on with notes and comments are candidates for a procedure update.
Perhaps your people can’t find your procedures, or possibly they’re unaware that you have a procedure for this or that activity. Maybe because it’s not right in front of them, they’re assuming you don’t have a formal procedure. Nonexistent or uncontrolled procedures imply that your quality management system is out of control. Consider using procedure management software to automate your procedures and include a search function for easy retrieval.
There’s also the possibility that your procedures are too simple; that is, they’re too broad and general to suit a specific situation. If your procedures aren’t directly to the point and don’t offer information specific to the process your employees are working on, they won’t be used. Consider simple procedures for deletion or add more information to improve the procedure.
Poorly written procedures are as bad as generic simple procedures. If your procedures are incorrect or confusing, your employees will not use them, either. Consider hiring a technical writer to at least edit your procedures.
Sometimes, procedures are not designed for ease of use. Either they’re hard to navigate in themselves, or their formats are inconsistent. Formats that are inconsistent across departments and work areas are a frequent source of confusion. Consider using a procedure style guide to standardize your procedures.
It helps to think about who procedures are written for when designing your procedures. Procedures are primarily designed to be training aids: Frequent, experienced users don’t need procedures often, if at all. They should periodically review procedures to be sure they’re current but on a day-by-day basis, they’re not your target.
Occasional users need reminding, but it’s novice users who need procedures the most. They’ll need the guidance of a procedure until the process has become ingrained.
To understand how to make your procedures work for your employees, you need to pay careful attention to the following:
Now that you know the secret to writing effective (i.e., useful) policies and procedures, what are you waiting for?
2 Comments
Hi,
What is the difference between Policy in the Procedure Template and the stand alone policy document?
Regards
Greg
Templates are made to create a structure, style, and format for your policy documents. They contain headers, margins, fonts, and indicate where process maps are used, references are included, and outline what control are used.