Office policies procedures manual

Check the U. Review your policies and procedures at least once a year. Make any changes necessary to keep your operations flowing smoothly and to comply with any legal or regulatory changes. Store your policies and procedures in a format that is easy to update. For example electronic files and binders give you the flexibility to make changes to one section without having to rework the entire manual.

Make sure your staff members have access to the policies and procedures. Have your employees sign a statement that they received the policies and procedures and agree to comply with them. Keep a copy of this signature page in their personnel files and have them sign new acknowledgements any time you revise or update your policies. NOTE: The following topics are provided as examples only and neither apply to all practices, nor represent a comprehensive list of all policies that may be beneficial or required.

Be sure to talk to your attorney and check with the U. Organizational Mission and Structure. No point in making a quality system that is cumbersome, difficult to use, or difficult to read. Take away all potential roadblocks for staff using your quality system.

This defeats the purpose of having a good quality system to keep your business nimble and flexible. So if you are going to create a policy and procedure fast with MS Word, check out some of the tips below you can utilize to speed things up.

If you know how to use it, it saves a lot of time and you can produce professional documents very quickly. Firstly, the Automated Table of Contents. This feature is awesome.

Create a quality system fast using a policy and procedure template with a table of contents already formatted. The automatic table of contents in Word is great once you know how to use it. However, there are numerous benefits of using the automated table of contents feature.

Once it is set up — it is very easy to update your Procedure Manual;. It makes it very easy to plan out your document accurately;. You can easily see the context of your document every time it is updated in the Table of Contents;.

It helps you plan your document and improve the overall structure. You can insert the type you want pretty easily. Changing it does become a bit harder but use the Styles to create your automated styles. This will open up the styles and you can go through and change the styles to suit. Using the styles takes a bit of practice. There are plenty of options to consider and you might need to do some research online on how to make it work right.

You should find the option to open this feature in the top right hand corner of the screen. See below. You can see the options are now expanded and they can be hidden again by simply clicking the same box.

Now you can include the text you want to change in the options provided. Also note the other check boxes below this which allow some pretty powerful functions and are worth experimenting with. The Find and Replace feature has plenty of options to try.

Experiment with what they do because they can make your life a lot easier when amending a file. It can be quite detailed and should be easy to read and understand.

Make it complex and full of big and impressive words and your team are definitely going to ignore it. The last thing you want. A procedure is different to a policy. A procedure is like a step by step instruction. These instructions need to be detailed and include every single step. If you miss a step can you expect your team to get it right? Now I hope that explains the difference. You can still create a quality system for your business using a policies and procedures template and combine the 2 together or keep them separate.

The following page below is an example of a policy. This policy is an Anti-Bullying Policy. This type of document should be direct and to the point.

The following image is an example of a very simple procedure. Creating a procedure is relatively easy. However, should you be breaking down the task into something small so it is manageable?

Providing images in the step by step process makes it easier to absorb the tasks. However, this is going to take you a lot of time to create. Particularly if the process is complex and detailed. Speed it up by using a policy and procedure template. It is very cost effective. All you need is MS Word software and you are ready to go. It is easy to add information. You can simply open the document and start adding policies and procedures.

Make it clear if a procedure is a one-off or a recurring daily, weekly, monthly, or annual task. Include the information below to outline procedures for one task in your procedure manual.

Your office procedures manual will likely be made of a series of tasks, some related and others completely separate. Obviously, group related tasks together.

Include lines or flow charts to indicate connection between the tasks. Have you ever created an office procedures manual? What tips, tricks, and best practices kept you on track? Share your experiences in the comments below.

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