The policies and procedures in your organization help it operate effectively. They provide direction to employees and spell out your organization’s philosophies, ethics, and standards. By providing a written framework for your organization’s operation, you can provide training and future reference documents that cover everything from daily tasks to safety processes to the ethics and vision of your organization.
The key to having your policies and procedures work well is making sure they are effectively communicated. Because the workplace is constantly changing, policies and procedures change also. Communicating your policies and procedures on a regular basis ensures that your employees are informed and on board.
During On-boarding and Integration
Employee orientation is a great time to communicate your organization’s policies and procedures. New employees are eager to learn the culture of their new environment, and it’s the easiest time to get buy-in on processes, values, and vision. Set clear expectations from day one, and an employee will be less likely to break the rules.
Employee orientation, however, can be a chaotic time for new employees. They are filling out a lot of paperwork, meeting new people, and learning new things. It’s important not to rely on employee orientation exclusively when you’re sharing your organization’s values, processes, and procedures. Consider following up a couple of weeks after orientation with a workshop reinforcing your most important policies and procedures, so they don’t get lost in the information-overload during their first few days.
During Development and Performance Management
Incorporate policy and procedure overviews into your development and performance management processes. Show employees how well they are doing and share with them how they can improve. When you associate policies and procedures with positive reviews as well as with correction, you demonstrate how important they are to your organization.
Remember to talk about the specific policies and procedures that affect employees instead of simply giving them a piece of paper to sign. If you don’t get into the details and explain how they relate to their job, they won’t take the policies and procedures seriously. Instead, they will see them as a formality.
Notify Employees when Policies and Procedures Are Updated
As the business environment changes, policies and procedures need to be updated. Each time the updates are made, it’s important to notify employees of the changes and have them formally sign off that they have been made aware of the change. This is the only way of legally holding them responsible for the new policies and procedures. More importantly, though, it’s the only way to ensure that effective communication occurs when changes are made so that employees can understand the new policies and abide by them.
When communicating changes in policies and procedures, be sure to share the “why” behind the change. Employees at all levels tend to get frustrated if they perceive that changes are arbitrary, especially if the new policies impact how they do their work. Change is difficult to adapt to, but providing the reasoning behind the change helps communication be more effective and helps employees buy into the new policies and procedures.
It’s important that all upper-level management adheres to policies and procedures. When managers take policies and procedures seriously and see them as a vital part of the organization’s function, their attitudes will be more likely to be adopted by other staff. When you share the policies and procedures at orientation, during reviews and discipline, and whenever there is a change, you’ll ensure that effective communication happens. Communicating these key policies and procedures ensures that your organization will continue to run smoothly in accordance with the values and ethics established by leadership.
The All-Too-Common Missing Ingredient
Many organizations are able to successfully define and communicate their internal policies and procedures when they are originally developed or when a new employee is hired; however, keeping policies updated and ensuring that all affected employees are notified and acknowledge relevant changes can become quite cumbersome. In fact, this ongoing administration can be near impossible.
Incorporating a web-based Policy Management tool into the practices of an organization will create an ongoing, successful deployment, administration and adherence to a company’s policies. With such a tool, management teams are able to not only define policies and administer changes, but they are also able to send notice of changes and require electronic acknowledgement by all affected employees.
Successful administration of Policies and Procedures is one of many effective strategies used to minimize unnecessary costs in the Employee Lifecycle. To learn more about this or other aspects of Employee Lifecycle Risk Management, contact S3 Management Group today. You can call 972-984-5275 or use our contact page to set up an appointment.