Policy Development
| Author | Marie Flatley |
| Pages | 595-597 |
Page 595
Companies develop policies generally to help them run efficiently in achieving their objectives. They also develop them to comply with the legal and social environment in which they operate as well as to build goodwill with both their employees and their customers. In this way, policies help shape the culture of an organization. They run the gamut from simple parking policies and dress codes to operational policies to complex policies involving benefits and legal rights. To help companies run efficiently, these policies must be appropriate, well written, and easily accessible. Furthermore, as management tools, they must be updated and maintained regularly to work effectively.
To create appropriate policies, companies must decide who is best for the job of creating policy, ensure that they are written clearly, and make them readily available to employees.
Depending on the size and management style of a company, the task of creating and writing policy statements varies widely. A small, growing company may start with unwritten policies created by the owners and move to written ones as the need arises. In the early twenty-first century, many such companies purchase template policy manuals, adapting them as appropriate to their businesses. As companies grow larger, their need for formal policies grows. These policies help ensure consistency and fairness to all employees.
The management style of the company often determines who sets the policies. Typically, companies with a top-down management style tend to delegate the policy making. Boards of directors often create policies for executives, while executives and managers create them for their subordinates. Very large companies not only have written policies; they often have different policies for different groups of employees. A set of travel policies, for example, may apply only to those employees who travel, or there may even be different policies for international and domestic travelers. The policy may even vary by level in the organization.
Figure 1
| Original | Improved revision |
| If a member of your family dies, you will receive three days off. | If a member of your immediate family dies, you will receive up to three days paid leave for travel to and from the funeral or for funeral and estate business. Your immediate family includes spouse or significant other, parents, grandparents, stepparents, step-grandparents, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, stepsisters and stepbrothers, first cousins, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, and children and stepchildren. |
| After you work for the company for six months, you are entitled to one day of vacation for every |
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