Organization Policy — A Must-Have?

Growth is at the forefront of every organization’s goals and one sure way to build your organization is through establishing standard policies and procedures.

Asides from the fact that policies and procedures play a vital role in the smooth running and growth of an organization, they also communicate your organization’s vision and values to your employees.

Organizational policies and procedures define the principles of conduct, provide a sense of direction, and set the standard for operations that gives order within the organization.

Are organizational policies and procedures that important? Absolutely! But before we tackle the reasons why policies and procedures are a necessity in any organization/ business and how yours will benefit from having standard policies and procedures, let’s first dive into what they are.

What are Policies and Procedures?

Although these terms are often used in close association, they mean different things.

Think of it as a roadmap. Roadmaps are strategic plans intended to achieve the desired goal. Likewise organization policies.

Organizational policy refers to a set of general guidelines defining an organization’s strategy for solving problems and getting the job done. It outlines the values and vision of the organization and communicates the day-to-day organizational operations to your employees. It also provides a sense of direction in which your employees are to comply with and follow for the effective and smooth running of your organization.

Policies set some pointers to guide the decision-making processes but allow for flexibility and adjustments. They tackle the “what” and “why” questions;

• What your organization is about (vision, mission, and values), what the employees’ roles are
• What is expected of your employees (good work attitude, confidentiality, reliability)
• What your employees can expect from your organization (benefits and compensation)
• What are the end goals or desired outcomes?
• What problems are your organization trying to solve and why
• Why is employee compliance important in the organization
• What customers/clients and the community at large can expect from the organization (customer service policies).

A Procedure, on the other hand, represents detailed action plans and strategies for executing organizational policies. It provides a list of detailed actions or steps to carry out specific responsibilities.

Procedures generally explain the “how” concerning the actions outlined by the policies.

• How to tackle a certain situation within the organization
• What steps need to be taken to execute the outlined policies
• Who is responsible for what within the organization
• Who is responsible for monitoring and evaluating the policies for their effectiveness and employee compliance.

Good policies and procedures ensure that employees know what to do, why they do it, and how to do it to keep your organization operating smoothly. Good policies and procedures should also be able to answer the key questions listed above.

Why are Policies and Procedures Important?

Save Time and Stress

When handling issues in the workplace, policies help provide guidelines as to how these issues should be handled and procedures outline the required steps to tackle the issues. Without standard policies and procedures in place, there’ll be disorder as a lot of time and labour will be wasted trying to deliberate on a course of action or action plans for each issue in the organization. If there is an incident in the organization, having already outlined policies and procedures helps tackle the issues and get the business operations up and running in little time.

Also, when all your employees comply with the policies and procedures, it results in the smooth running of the organization’s operations. Issues are identified and resolved as soon as they appear and this saves a lot of time and labour which could be directed to other areas within the organization and it’ll encourage growth.

Policy and Procedures aids Compliance

Every organization operating within a sector is guided by a set of laws and regulations guiding its operations. Having policies and procedures in your organization helps to ensure that your company complies with the laws and regulations. They help your company comply with all federal, state, local statutes. In addition to compliance, good policies and procedures ensure that your organization is bound to the best practices in your industry.

On the side, Policies and procedures that are regularly evaluated and updated will further assist your organization or workplace in adhering to any new or modified laws.

Guide the Decision-Making Process

The decision-making process is a vital part of any organization and policies and procedures help simplify this process. Policies set indicators that guide the decision-making processes and are also flexible enough to be updated.

They are highly beneficial in decision-making as it provides a set of guidelines that employees can easily access which helps to tackle issues, maintain stability, bring order and structure to the organization. Also, they ensure consistency and uniformity in decisions made within an organization. The resulting decisions will be consistent as they would be guided by the governing principles.

Setting Standards For Organizational Operations

Policies and procedures set the standard for operations within the organization that affect every member of the organization. It guides the employees’ actions within the organizations as well as providing benchmarks for reviewing if these actions are producing the desired results.

Policies and standards also set the standard for employers or managers in the workplace which encourages fairness, accountability, and transparency within the organization. No one is exempted from obeying the set policies and following the outlined procedures. This guides both the employer and employees on proper conduct.

Provide a System to Handle Complaints and Misunderstandings

Policies and procedures provide a set of principles to handle complaints either from an employee, client, or management and actions to carry out to rectify these complaints. Policies set out the processes for reporting any issues and the procedures provide the standard actions to be carried out to solve the issues in the workplace.

With this strategy in place, the employees will know what to do, how to do it, and what steps to take should any issues arise. There will be a uniform process for handling complaints and resolving disagreements. This will produce confidence in staff and boost their professionalism.

To sum up, the simple basic significance of policies and procedures remain that they provide the structure within the organization and any company without standard policies and procedures will not be able to stand the test of time and will crumble from a lack of structure.