Written by A Quick Guide to Knowing your Policies and Procedures
Whether you’re assessing employee performances, recruiting new staff or conducting return to work interviews, learning policies and procedures like the back of your hand, has many benefits. Unfortunately, for many of us this can be a tedious and often difficult task. Any good business will have a strict set of policies or procedures which will need to be followed in the day to day running of the business. Often we will be complicit just by doing our jobs, but when it comes to dealing with disciplinary procedures, appraisals or absenteeism, a watertight knowledge of policies and procedures becomes essential. Why not use these tips to help you to learn your procedures and policies?
Prioritise each individual policy or procedure
Learning a company’s full set of policies and procedures can appear daunting, but to overcome this you can prioritise each section by level of importance, with regards to any current issues, employee behaviours or company initiatives. You could use coloured highlighters to label sections as less, fairly or very important.
Organise information into manageable chunks
Furthermore, you can more easily learn a particularly lengthy list of policies and procedures by breaking them down into clear, logical sections. After reading each section, try to summarise all of the information by developing and answering five questions on the topic. This can be far more beneficial than repeatedly trawling through pages and pages of text, hoping to cling on to phrases or sentences here and there.
Mindmap learning policies and procedures
Alternatively, why not create a mind map for each section? The act of drawing the map, and actively engaging with the freshly-absorbed knowledge as you do so, will do wonders for your memory retention.
Ensure policy and procedure manuals are designed well
As a senior member of staff, you may have some input during the writing and organising of company policies and procedures. If so, you could improve future learning by using concise sentences and simple terminology. On top of this, bright colours and images are proven to improve memory retention.
Structure properly
As well as the content, you’ll also need to put thought into the structure of your policies and procedures. Information will need to be split into sections – one for recruitment, one for performance reviews, and so on. A clear table of contents should also be created, for quick and easy checking of specific policies or procedures.
Use activities to aid the learning process
Sometimes, for example during recruitment interviews, you may require your team leaders or supervisors to also brush up on company policies and procedures. If this is the case, then alongside the above, you could undertake certain group activities to encourage greater awareness and knowledge of company procedures and policies. These could be the designing of posters, competitive quizzes, or even themed weeks. Any activity which encourages employees to learn in an effective but entertaining way will be beneficial.
Policies and procedure learning is not just for inductions
During induction, managers and new staff alike will go through a company’s official policies and procedures. However, this is normally the extent of their familiarity with them. However, during sensitive or significant events like performance reviews or return to work interviews, a lack of familiarity with policies and procedures can cause problems for managers and employees alike.
How good is your knowledge of company policies and procedures?
How good is your knowledge of company policies and procedures? Do you have any other tips or tricks which you’ve used to make this tedious and tiresome task more manageable and entertaining?