Policy Distributions

Drafting is not the only step to developing complete and effective policy documents. Policies must be disseminated to the target audience in the most-effective and efficient means possible.

While conducting an operational assessment, the auditor asked to see the organization's manual of policies and procedures. She was presented with a six-volume set of operational and administrative policies and procedures comprising near 3000 pages. These binder pages were a hodgepodge of legal terminology, operational guides, and executive mandates. Later the auditor was presented with additional policy volumes relevant to procurement requirements, a funding guide, and an operations policy binder. There was no central index, nor were there searchable electronic versions available. These volumes were kept at several locations and access was very limited to two of the volumes. The auditor asked to whom these policies applied? The senior manager replied, "all employees."

To be truly effective and efficient, policies must be distributed to the intended audience to convey the message. It is not reasonable to expect all policies to apply to all employees at all times. Applicable policies should be distributed to the intended audience in a timely and effective fashion. After distributing the policies, it is important in some cases for employee acknowledgments to be executed and returned to the Human Resources unit for accountability purposes. This would be the case with policies such as the use of e-mail.

Consider the use of online policy manuals. Using this online method, a smaller number of policies with application to specific business departments or functional units can be developed, disseminated, and easily modified. They are easier to disseminate and are more easily updated and distributed than the larger companywide paper versions.