2 Day Workshop

Interactive learning for practitioners responsible for writing and implementing the policies and procedures used by organisations, businesses and management committees.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the function of policy for organisations and their oversight bodies
• Identify the policies and procedures needed for your organisation
• Understand the stages of the policy-development process
• Know how to engage approvers, implementers and those affected to test and deliver what is needed and to facilitate approvals by decision-makers
• Know how to write policies and procedures that are clear and concise
• Understand the features of a good organisational system for policy, procedure and guideline development
• Know how to facilitate smooth implementation
• Know how to plan for long-term management and evaluation

Course Overview

Day One:  Planning organisational policy and procedures

1. Policy issues

• What is policy? (From public policy to organisational policy)
• Policies vs procedures
• Policy as smoke screen or aspiration

2.  Organisational policy

• Why do you need policies and procedures?
• What makes policies and procedures work?
• What does good policy look like?
• Your organisation: What do you have? What do you need?
• Managing policy development in a changing organisational environment

3.  Policy approvers, responsible officers and users

• What do policy approvers, responsible officers and users want and need?
• Providing what they need: the briefing note and board paper
• Encouraging engagement and buy-in

4. What does good policy look like?

• Common threads and organisational differences
• Understanding successful policy
• Defining policy scope (and avoiding policy creep)
• Developing a policy framework
• Developing a policy template 

Day Two: Writing and implementing organisational policy and procedures

5. Developing content for policies and procedures

• Research and needs analysis
• Engaging stakeholders
• Consulting across the organisation
• Checklists – friend or foe

 6. Writing for clarity and purpose

• Working with your template
• Achieving the right style and tone
• Writing in plain English
• Writing strategies

7. Implementation and communication

• Achieving sign-off and agreement
• Integrating policy across the organisation
• Encouraging uptake
• Making policies findable and searchable
• Making policy part of everyday business
• Policy as part of workplace induction

8. Evaluation and long-term management

• Guiding and training authors
• Policy coherence and internal consistency
• Registering, revising and reviewing policies
• Evaluating policy and procedures
• Everything you still want to know