Video:How to Create Policies That Employees Can Follow

Transcript:How to Create Policies That Employees Can Follow

Hi! This is Meghan Lynn Allen for About.com, and today we're discussing how to create policies that employees can follow.Company policies are important - but more important, they need to be widely followed. Here a few tips to make sure that happens.

Creating Company Policies

Company policies should be clearly printed and included in an employee handbook. Make sure that your company's employee handbook employee handbook is tailored to be specific to your company, but also follow state and federal regulations. Company policies and your employee policies should be a baseline for employee expectations but won't include everything, and should weed out the extraneous from the possible - what you need to accomplish every day in the workplace and have set rules for.

Types of Company Policies

Company policies should cover such things as lunch breaks, vacation periods, pay scale and benefits. It should cover things that every employee is eligible for, or the rules apply to in every case. You don't want the company policies to be extraneous or extraordinary, such as requiring every employee to know every detail about the company's history - but maybe that is something you require of the CEO.

Make Sure Employees Follow Company Policies

Once those company policies are in place, it's important to follow through. Middle management and top management should be enforcing the policies set in place most often by human resources officers. Company policies should be widely distributed. It should be a handbook that's on every employee's desk, or an e-mail that's in every employee's e-mail account. Whether you're doing employee orientation or re-orientation, retreats, be sure that company policies are reviewed in a timely manner, such as six months or a year. If employees are aware that policies are in place, they'll be more likely to follow them.

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