How to Create Policies
Policies have a bad reputation. Most people’s experience of policies is being given a dusty file or an 80 page document of legal speak, and then signing to say you’ve read it, honest. But there are genuine reasons why policies are good to have, as well as should have. In essence a policy is a declaration of how you’re going to do a particular thing, to make sure it’s done properly and that people are looked after and treated fairly.
Why create policies?
In very small organisations, when everything is going well, it can seem like a pointless exercise to create them, but there are 3 key reasons why you should still get on the policy train:
They set an intention for the kind of organisation you want to be and how you want to treat people. Policies can be radical, they can address inequality and change the way people work.
For example, flexible working policies can literally change someone’s life and make balancing work and caring responsibilities not only possible but also take away some of the guilt and worry around having to ask for changes.
They provide a road map for how to deal with difficult situations and protect you from legal challenges. Many policies you don’t need unless something goes wrong.
Where human beings and feelings are involved, managing problems can become fraught and an agreed policy gives you a safety net that you are dealing with it in the correct way, from a legal and organisational perspective.
They provide legacy and stability to your team. You may run an organisation that follows best practice at all times but then you leave and someone else takes over and can do what they like. Having clear policies means that there’s consistency and a record of how things are done.
What do you need?
Some policies are a legal requirement (Health and Safety, Grievance and Disciplinary). Others are about best practice, help you stay compliant with the law even if the policy itself isn’t always required, or they are often a requirement for securing funding as they demonstrate good working practice (Safeguarding, Environmental, Equality and Diversity, Data Protection).
When you employ staff or have more than 5 employees there are more policies needed than if you are a very small company.
The policy itself sets your intention and is an agreed understanding, for example “we will provide staff with annual leave and you get X number of days holiday per year”. The procedure is a step by step guide of how to make this happen, for example, “when we receive a complaint this is what we do”. For many areas of your work both are required.
So how do you know what you need? Unfortunately there isn’t one definitive list as it depends on what work you do, the size of your organisation and the level of risk for different areas. I’m going to be honest, this is the point where you might get a bit overwhelmed as it can be a big old list once you start researching, so start with the essentials and then build up based on what’s relevant to your work. It’s better to have a handful of robust policies which are understood and used by your organisation, than 76 copy and paste policies that no one ever looks at.
Here are some resources to help pull together your list:
Template HR policies from ACAS (who also have an incredible, free HR advice helpline).
NCVO’s help and guidance sections on ‘running a charity’ and ‘safeguarding’ have lots of useful information and templates which can apply to all kinds of organisations, whether you’re a charity or not. If you join as a member you can also get a whole suite of template policies
RadHR is a crowdsourced bank of policies and guides focused on anti-oppression
Health and Safety Executive’s guide to creating a Health and Safety policy. They also have templates for other H&S related policies and risk assessments.
Making policies meaningful
Templates are a really useful starting point for creating your policies and the links above should point you in the right direction. Ideally though templates should only be a starting point. Here are a few ways to ensure your policies are both useful and used:
Involve the whole organisation, from board to staff team, in your policies in some way. It depends on the size of the organisation how you can make this work but if one person sits alone in a room and writes the lot, it’s a sure fire way to ensure no one reads them or cares.
Until something affects you directly it’s easy to think it’s a great policy so make sure you have people from different backgrounds, family set ups and working patterns involved in creating or reviewing your policies. Don’t be afraid to rip them up and start again if they’re not serving your organisation or supporting the people you work with
Use clear language. The people it’s for and the people delivering the policy have to understand every word or it’s pointless.
There’s a tendency to go for an extremely formal and overly complex style to make them seem official. Have someone read over a policy and explain it back to you or ask about anything they don’t understand to sense check it.
Create bullet point summaries, to issue with relevant policies.
For example, project staff are often asked to read a whole Safegaurding policy, despite the fact that large sections of it don’t apply to them.
Make sure they’re somewhere easily accessible.
A staff handbook with hyperlinks to all the relevant policies can help people find what they need and prevent overwhelm
Do a walk through of the procedures linked to your policies using a hypothetical situation. In small organisation standard policies often need adjusting as they assume certain roles exist within the team, when in reality one person may do many of these things.
Introduce policies with briefings, Q&A sessions, through induction and through workshops. Make them real.
In a data protection policy workshop I get people to write down their personal details and then ask them if they’d be happy for me to share them in different ways. It brings it to life if it’s your own data at risk and it’s memorable if you give someone a data controller hat and then shred everything at the end of the workshop.
Get trustees drawing flowcharts of safeguarding reporting on big sheets of paper. Use post its to map out responsibilities for HR. Do scenario work with an experienced facilitator for your equalities policy. Walk around the space your health and safety policy applies to. Keep your policies live to make them meaningful.
Ultimately policies should work for you and your organisation to help things run smoothly, so take the time to create them, tame them or embrace them- whatever stage you are at.