Effective Policies and Procedures Summary:
  • Every organisation is subject to legal and regulatory requirements. We recommend having policies and procedures for managing those requirements.
  • A comprehensive procedures manual is a valuable business asset that enables employee engagement, contributes to your workplace culture, and codifies your competitive advantage. 
  • Having effective policies and procedures are useful in reducing the risk of unfair dismissal. 
  • Creating policies and procedures is an investment in the sustainable growth of the organisation.

What are Policies and Procedures?

  • Policies establish the overarching guidelines and principles that govern an organisation's operations. They provide a clear understanding of the organisation's purpose and values, and the rules for action, interaction, engagement, governance, and decisions.
  • ​Procedures outline the step-by-step processes for carrying out specific tasks or activities within the organisation. They provide relevant instructions to perform tasks efficiently, safely, and in compliance with established policies. Procedures can include checklists, forms, audio, and videos that help somebody work through the task or activity.

Why is it important to have Policies and Procedures? 

Policies and procedures add value to organisations. They provide a documented foundation for:
  • Standardisation, Productivity, Consistency and Efficiency: Having documented policies and procedures provide the foundation for consistency in the way the organisation delivers its product or service, and interacts with customers, suppliers, and others. They enable more effective workflows across your business and help to reduce duplication, waste, and rework.
  • Legal Compliance: Every organisation is subject to a variety of legal and regulatory requirements. Having effective policies and procedures outlines the way your organisation navigates the compliance requirements and give clarity to the team about what they need to do to ensure the organisation complies with them, and to avoid potential fines or penalties.
  • Risk Reduction: Policies and procedures can help to identify and mitigate potential risks beyond the legal risks. Typically, organisations create policies and procedures to document their mitigation of risk for loss of reputation, maintaining compliance, safety protocols, fair employment, managing business property, information security, and data privacy.
  • Easier and More Reliable Training: Policies and procedures enable more effective training of employees and contractors, and form the basis of an induction process for new employees.
  • Termination of Employment: Having policies and procedures that outline guidelines of employee conduct and provide clarity of disciplinary action can enable employment termination for misconduct, and lower the risk of unfair dismissal claims against the organisation. See more about termination of employment. 

WHEN USING THE H FACTOR SYSTEM

​HOW TO ACCESS THE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES? ​
In The Codebook, go to Procedures Manual. All the Current Codes will be available and you also have the option to search or filter the codes if you have many codes. 
Click Open This Chapter to the specific Codebook that you want to view the content. In View Details, you will be able to see all the Code details and also the prior version if applicable. ​​​
​CAN WE UPDATE THE EXISTING ​POLICIES, PROCEDURES, AND TRAINING MANUAL?
In Procedures Manual, if you select Open This Chapter you have the below options to update the Policies, Procedures and Training Manual.
  • View Details - You can view the Code details and also the prior versions if available. 
  • Edit & Publish Code - You can update all the information included in the Code and you have an option to publish it. Once published, a code can only be replaced by another version. When a code is updated with a new version, H-Me will keep a copy of this code in the Past Versions list.
  • Update with New Version - If you have created a new version, you need to confirm the end date for the old version and you also have an option to make the code inactive. This will remove the Code from the Current Codes table and move it to the Previous Versions table. Once you inactive a Code, this cannot be undone. This is only applicable to published codes. 
  • Make Inactive - This is the other option to make the codes inactive.​

HOW TO CREATE EFFECTIVE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES?
10 Tips for creating effective policies and procedures:
  1. Ensure they are in a format that can be shared - policies and procedures that nobody can access when they need them are pointless.
  2. Make them clear, concise, simple, and easy to understand.
  3. Avoid getting overly concerned about having a consistent format, or having them look pretty - the most important when first writing procedures, is to get them out of peoples heads, so make that as easy as possible.
  4. Involve employees in the development process - the best person to write a procedure is the person who actually completes the activity.
  5. Create a process to review and update policies and procedures on a regular basis - this can make a great team activity.
  6. Avoid creating a bottleneck or gatekeeper - enable and trust the team to create, edit, and update procedures so that they more readily share their knowledge.
  7. If writing a policy that involves potential misconduct, be clear about the required conduct and any disciplinary action that can be taken for non-compliance with the policy.
  8. Separate your policies and procedures from your employment contracts by having a clause in the contract requiring employee compliance with policies and procedures over the term of their employment, and outlining that disciplinary action can be applied for non-compliance with them, and that policies and procedures may change over the term of employment.
  9. Create policies that reflect the business culture and way of working that fits your desired business model - avoid copying from competitors, downloading from the Internet, or having overly generic content created by AI.
  10. Build competitive advantage - look for the things that make your business different and codify them into your procedures and training.
HOW TO CREATE THE STRUCTURE FOR YOUR POLICIES AND PROCEDURES?
System administrators (H Keepers) can add new chapters and edit existing chapters in The Codebook under the HR Tab. You can also move policies and procedures between chapters. 
who can add new policies and procedures?
Any user can add or edit a procedure or training. If the procedure or training has been published then the system will keep all prior versions. The system tracks who edited and when it was edited. Only system administrators (H Keepers) can add or edit a policy. 
who can see the policies and procedures? 
All policies and procedures are visible to all employees. 
Disclaimer: The information on this page is general guidance material. We recommend that you seek advice that takes into consideration the specific circumstances of your business, employment contracts, and/or other employment conditions. 

    Easily stay up to date.
    Sign up for our newsletter.
Try it for free
(c) Copyright 2024 INCOMMAND Pty Ltd.  View our privacy policy and data security statement.  Please note that your use of The H Factor system is subject to our Terms of Service.