Creating well-thought-out and clear company policies help set clear expectations for everyone in your business and safeguard your business from possible legal problems. Whether you’ve just started your home care franchise with firm policies already set or you’re just about to develop your own policies, improving your business operations is a continuous process.
But before you create your company policies, you need to understand what exactly they are, so you can develop policies that fit your business best.
What Exactly are Company Policies?
They’re basically rules that govern the code of conduct of everyone in a company or organization, including you, the employer. They can even govern conduct outside the workplace and should be included in your employee handbook.
Besides ensuring proper conduct, you make certain that your policies ensure that your people have specific guaranteed rights to strengthen morale and communicate to them that you value them. Likewise, having robust policies will help your business be less susceptible to employee dissatisfaction or lawsuits from former or current employees.
Creating Solid Company Policies
Set Specific Goals
To do this, you should first determine problem issues, so you can set specific goals to include in your policies. When setting goals, you need to establish what you want to achieve with the policies before you set them.
You should then list down your goals in your written policies so that your employees will know and understand why the policies are in place and how they can follow them. Make your policies clear, short, very easy to understand, but comprehensive, with no room for ambiguity and loopholes.
Check Out Other Companies’ Policies
Good intentions are great, but these won’t be enough to ensure the success of your policies. This is why you should read other companies’ policies when creating yours. For instance, if you’re looking to implement a particular policy that you know is being implemented in another business, you could use that when making yours.
Craft Your Policies
After determining your goals and checking sample policies from like-minded companies, you can then craft your own policies. Make sure to ask for input from your employees and adjust the policies according to their feedback if possible.
To check the comprehensiveness and reasonability of the policies, try applying them to realistic scenarios in your head. If they mostly achieve your desired results, chances are that they’re workable.
Check With Your Legal and Management Teams
If you require your management team’s approval, share your policies with them before implementing them. Also, you should check with your legal team to help make sure that the policies you created will minimize any future liabilities in various scenarios.
Add Your Company Policies to the Employee Handbook
Add the policies to your handbook, if you already have one. You should then tell them to read the policies. Encourage them to ask questions, communicate their concerns, and offer feedback. This will show them that you value their opinions.
Likewise, once your employees have reviewed the policies, you should have them sign to confirm that they’ve reviewed the policies and understand them. Tell your employees that they must also keep a copy of the signed document with them.
In a nutshell, company policies determine the way employers and employees work, behave, and interact in and out of their workplace. So it’s crucial that you have firm, fair, and reasonable policies in place.
Lastly, make sure to review your policies and employee handbook at least once yearly. This will help ensure that they comply with state and federal laws, as well as your business’s specific goals. Remember, new rules and laws could impact both the language of your policies and you could implement them.