Writing Business Plans: Organizational Policies and Procedures: Resources

To distinguish between these two terms, policies are general statements of how an organization want things to be within its walls. For example, it may have a policy that dictates eager, aggressive, do-whatever-takes customer support. But to make that policy a working reality, it will also have one or more procedures that define exactly what to do -- step by step -- when a customer calls with a complaint or problem.

If you are enrolled in a course associated with this page, you are in a writing course, not a business-policy course. Our focus is on good writing, well-designed documents, documents that accomplish their purpose, and documents that meet common expectations as to their content, organization, and format. Policies and procedures are obviously an important application of writing and can contain substantial technical information about a business's operations. That's why it's a good option for the final project in a technical-writing course.

You can write policies and procedures if you needs to write such a document for an actual business or organization, if you are working for an organization that lacks them, or if you'd merely like to do some constructive daydreaming about how an organization ought to be structured. Beware, however, if you are just playing around with this notion: the policies and procedures you write for this course must be every bit as serious, realistic, specific, factual, well-researched, and well-thought-out as policies and procedures for a real situation.

Policies and procedures can be very large documents containing information that you may have no way of getting. Work with your instructor to reach an agreement on the scope of the document you write. Remember too that your instructor is probably not a professional business or organizational consultant and probably won't be able to help you on the finer points of your policies and procedures document.

For this unit, CCH Incorporated has kindly agreed to let us link to its SOHO Guidebook: A Practical Guide to Starting, Running and Growing a Small Business. This guidebook contains a wealth of information; but, for the purposes of the policies and procedures document, please study the following:

• What Should Go in the Handbook (Company Policies)
• Rules for Your Workers
• When to Communicate Your Work Policies
• Communicating Policies in Writing
• Communicating Your Policies Orally
• Creating an Absence Policy
• Sample Absence Policies: Ready to Customize
• Written Substance Abuse Policies

You'll probably have lots of questions for your instructor about what would work and how to construct your own policies and procedures; contact hcexres@io.com.

The World Wide Web has other resources for people writing policies and procedures: