Discipline and accountability are valuable in helping an organization move forward towards achieving its objectives. Without them, there would be zero benchmarks on proper conduct, leading to chaos, disorder, and misdemeanors. A business policy establishes how operations should and the consequences when there’s a violation. This helps the management monitor its subordinates’ performance and behavior. Scroll down below for more information about policies.
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What Is a Business Policy?
A business policy is a list of guidelines from the top-level management of an organization assigned to its subordinates to help them deal with several issues without their consultation. In a more basic sense, business policies are rules to dictate the proper conduct and procedure around an organization. The policies provide a company with established limitations and standards that they need to adhere to. This defines its values, culture, and objectives.
Types of Business Policies
Policies reinforce order and promote the right way of living. More often than not, breaching policies means disrupting society’s steady flow and tranquility. This is why all organizations and establishments impose their own policies to preserve their peace, decorum, and standards. This is especially important in businesses. According to Chron, business policies are crucial because it impacts their employees’ gratification. It’s also compliance with legal responsibilities. It creates a conducive working environment and paints the business with a positive image.
Here is a list of policies that your business needs:
1. Ethics and conduct policy. This ensures that the people in the company acts and deals with external transactions appropriately.
2. Non-discrimination policy. This policy assures that everyone, regardless of race, age, and background and given equal opportunities.
3. Cybersecurity policy. Because everything’s up online, there’s a need to protect the company’s interest, usage, and information online.
4. Safety policy. No one in the organization should be at risk or feel unsafe in their own workplace.
5. Compensation and benefits policy. This addresses matters concerning the employees’ payroll, vacation leaves, and insurance plans, among others.
6. Employment policy. This helps employees understand the demands of their roles and the standards for their assessment.
7. Misconduct policy. This introduces the process of discipline and the imposed consequences when there’s a policy violation.
How to Write a Business Policy
To help you get started on your business policies, here are some guidelines that you can follow:
1. Identify Operational Problems
You can’t identify what policies and procedures to make without referring to your business operations’ activities and matters. Before proceeding to lay the foundations of your policy manual, examine your environment. Take note of the processes that you do, the materials involved, the products or services you’re catering, and the workforce under your roof. From there, identify operational problems that you might encounter along the way and how your policies can alleviate them. This way, your policies will have a more focused approach and would fit for the kind of industry that you’re in. You might also want of there are state laws and regulations that you need to integrate along with your details.
2. List Down Policy Categories
Now that you have valuable information on how you can draft your policy, start by identifying its different categories. You might want to impose discipline by having a conduct policy and ethics policy. If you’re working on high-risk physical projects such as construction plans, you might want to emphasize safety policy. If you want everyone to reach a certain work standard, you can impose a quality policy. There are various policy types that you can add on your outline, but make sure that it fits your working environment well.
3. Decide on the Consequences
When you’re done identifying what rules and procedures you want to include under each policy category, it’s time for you to decide on your consequences. Determine which violations or actions lead to lighter implications such as verbal warnings or written warnings and which of those might result in suspension or termination. If there’s a hierarchy for different degrees of offense, you may want to include that clearly. This way, everyone’s aware of their conduct, the company’s standards, and the results of violations.
4. Use Clear, Simple, and Active Language
Because you’re writing a corporate policy, everyone in the organization must understand each statement without a need for deeper interpretation or explanation. This is you need to apply a clear, simple, and active language consistently. Review your policies and look for paragraphs that have unclear phrases or difficult expressions. Keep everything as basic and concise as possible. There’s no use distributing policy information when its recipients can hardly interpret what statements and the procedures mean.
FAQs
What’s the difference between a policy and a procedure?
Although they’re often used interchangeably, a policy is more of a principle that leads the organization towards a destination. On the other hand, a procedure is a set of steps that one needs to follow in order to achieve its objectives.
What are the characteristics of a business policy?
The characteristics of business policy are clear, dependable, appropriate, basic, specific, comprehensive, stable, and flexible.
What are the disadvantages of a business policy?
Some of the disadvantages of having a business policy include:
- It demands financial investment to implement.
- It limits the organization’s freedom and restricts some of its decisions.
- It causes frustration by hindering some actions.
While business action plans and strategic methods are necessary for making a business huge success, it won’t be possible without the implemented internal policies within the organization. Every business needs to abide by different rules and regulations to achieve a harmonious working space and smooth-sailing processes. Go through our business policy templates for your organization and download yours now!
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