The word "policies" might create visions of dull and irrelevant documents that, once written, never again see the light of day. You may even have had the experience of being sent pages and pages of dry policies when starting a job - only to forget the majority of the content by day two. And yet, policies can be a powerful tool in steering your team towards key goals and achieving organisational growth.
The Power of Policies
Policies should be designed to empower your people. When written to support positive employee experiences and reflect the organisation's values and goals, they provide clear guidelines for how things should be done. They ensure consistency in decision-making, help maintain legal compliance and serve as a roadmap for both employees and managers, especially when challenging or complex issues arise.
Introducing Policies Through Onboarding
When a new employee joins, it’s the perfect opportunity to introduce them to key policies as part of the onboarding process. By investing time in explaining policies, organisations can reinforce their importance and demonstrate that they are living documents designed to provide clarity and answers. People thrive on clarity, offering clear expectations and creating an even playing field by ensuring that the same rules apply to everyone.
Managers play a key role in this process. By taking the time to discuss policies with new people, answering their questions, and providing real-world applications, they help employees understand how policies translate into daily activities. This approach ensures that policies are not just theoretical guidelines but are actively applied in the workplace.
Keeping Policies Clear, Alive and Relevant
The foundation of effective company policies is clarity. The first step in creating policies that work for your organisation is to ensure they are written in a clear, accessible way. Start by eliminating jargon and unnecessary complexity. Use plain English that reflects your company’s voice and aligns with your brand. This ensures that every employee, regardless of their role, can easily understand the policies and their purpose.
Once written, policies need to evolve with your organisation. Reviewing them at least once a year ensures they stay relevant and effective. Getting employees involved in the review process not only keeps policies up to date but also increases consultation, buy-in and understanding.
Leveraging digital platforms makes policy access easy, while video messages (or live ones!) from leadership can enhance engagement. Interactive training modules and workshops keep employees actively involved, and mobile access ensures policies are always within reach.
Asking employees to re-read policies and confirm their understanding through a simple digital acknowledgment can be beneficial from both an engagement and a compliance perspective. If an issue arises, documented acknowledgment makes it clear that expectations were communicated. Additionally, policies can serve as a reference point in cases of misunderstandings or disputes, helping managers resolve issues more effectively.
The Value of Bespoke Forms and Templates
Forms and templates can support an organisation's policies and procedures by helping streamline processes, ensure consistency, and maintain compliance with company policies and legal requirements. These could include onboarding and offboarding documents and systems, training and development templates, and performance management forms, among others.
While there are many free and AI-generated template options available, relying solely on them can be a false economy. AI-generated content might appear efficient, but it often lacks the deep understanding and alignment to an organisation's unique culture and goals. Just like policies, investing time and expertise into developing well-crafted templates, aligned with your organisation's goals and culture, pays dividends. Human expertise ensures that templates consider not just legal requirements but also practical, real-world application, which AI might overlook.
This is an area where having the right expertise is important. For Kiwi organisations, AI-generated content may not always account for NZ legal nuances or industry-specific best practices. This is where experience and expertise help differentiate, understanding not just what the law says, but how it is applied in real life to real human beings.
A Worthwhile Investment
Policies should be more than just a standard set of rules - they should reflect your organisation’s unique vision, culture, and values. By aligning policies with your specific needs, they become meaningful and practical rather than just a box-ticking exercise.
Thoughtfully crafted policies, and their supporting documentation, help unite people around common objectives, strengthen company values, foster a positive culture, and ultimately drive organisational growth.