3 Tips for Revamping Your Policies and Procedures When Your World Turns Upside Down
The world just got thrown a little bit of a curve ball, don’t you think? Many industries are revamping policies and procedures to incorporate recent changes. Some changes may include compliance, sanitation standards, social standards, and even human interaction standards.
Respectfully to those who have suffered through these times, we’d like to offer a few tips for updating policies and procedures within your organization, and help define that “new normal.”
Tip 1: Get Your Team Together and Ask Them: “What Can We Do Better?”
Your employees are your biggest, most important asset. Tap into them and ask them about a topic they can assist you to improve. This topic can be a past or upcoming process.
A sample topic could be: “What could have improved about curb-side delivery?”
Your employees will share their point of view. In fact, they’ll be happy to tell you what they believe should’ve happened instead. Once you get a few answers, focus on the common denominator. For example, let’s say 7 out of 10 team members answered: “Patrons didn’t like the way we greeted them during curb-side delivery.” This should give you a hint that the greeting part of the process needs improvement. Ask your team what they would do to make the process more effective moving forward.
Listen carefully to what your employees say. This is where the latest curb-side delivery procedure is born.
Then, get with your instructional designer and create an updated process according to regulatory guidelines, and create the training around it. Remember this situation may now be part of your “new normal,” so keep your topic as evergreen as you can while specific to your company. That way, if an unexpected situation occurs again, you’ll only have to tweak the content you already have.
Tip 2: That “Quick and Dirty” Process You Had to Write to Get Through These Tough Times? Revise it.
Understandable. You wanted your business to keep going and quickly changed, wrote down and recorded video of up-to-the-minute processes, policies, procedures, training materials, etc. Well done. But, before you permanently imprint them into your operations manual and training materials, review those new policies and procedures once more.
How? Delegate.
Have an experienced team member check your existing policies and procedures versus the ones you had to emergency-create. Be sure the documents aren’t contradicting each other, but complementing each other. The last thing you want is a brand new team member to be super confused about which procedure to follow. You also don’t want your trainer to be wondering what to train in the future.
Be clear and align your old stuff with your updated stuff. Furthermore, be sure your updated materials have a place. Either create the “What the hell just happened in 2020 manual” and tell people this is the process to follow for now, or take the time it takes to incorporate your newest materials with your existing procedures.
Tip 3: Check Your Team’s Morale
You can’t write great policy and procedure with the help of your team if the morale isn’t right. At the same time, you needed to get back to full-time business like “yesterday.” We get it. But try and honor the fact that something has changed for your organization.
Take a beat to acknowledge the times and be honest about the future of your company with your team. Clarity and honesty might just be your best policies.
After all, 2020 is happening to everyone. Time and sleep are two things humans have in common, and 1) time has flown by this year, and 2) many of us have lost sleep over it. Keep it real, positive as appropriate, and offer professional help in your organization, if possible and needed.
We’re Here for You!
We are Miranda Park Learning. When you need a hand from your friendly instructional design team to effectively revamp your policies and procedures, we’d be honored to assist you.
For more information, contact Cassy Huidobro at 720-722-9998 or via email at [email protected].
Picture: A Policies and Procedures Manual set up and shot by Miranda Park Learning.
This text was created by Miranda Park Learning and it’s been verified as unique by Copyscape.
