Managing company policies isn’t rocket science
Implement our down-to-earth approach.
Give your team confidence and space to innovate safely…
…delivering on your purpose and profit, while safeguarding your reputation.
In our first article Making Company Policies a Strategic Asset, we discussed some typical problems, what good looks like, and making the transformation.
Remember it starts with a change of mindset to see your company policies as a powerful tool for aligning your team behind your goals. Simple, targeted, user-friendly policies that your team believe in and follow.
Why is this important?
Effective policies act as a bridge between your purpose, your values, your strategy and what happens on the frontline. They capture often hard-won lessons. Become part of your culture. Enable your team to turn your vision into action. Your intentions into outcomes.
Effective policies go beyond compliance with laws and regulations. They can reinforce the behaviours you want as an owner or director. It might be innovation, agility, or customer-focus... Behaviours that enable your business to grow - resilient sustained growth. When you invest in effective policies, you’re investing in long-term success.
Managing policies well enables you to spot red flags, to identify breaches early and intervene early. You can avoid minor breaches taking you down a slippery road that eventually turns to sheet ice and you end up on your backside! It may not be a fatal or near-death experience, but it can still seriously hurt and be horribly embarrassing. Where are you turning a blind eye that you might come to regret?
Why address this now?
The demands on you as an owner or director are increasing as regulations tighten up on what constitutes good governance. The UK Corporate Governance Code is expanding in scope. You need confidence that your company is doing what you say you’re doing. You need to “mind the say-do gap”. In the UK, laws on Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency are making it a corporate offence to fail to prevent a fraud. And the definition of fraud covers broad misrepresentation, even greenwashing.
Pressure from stakeholders is growing. They are looking for greater accountability and transparency. Investors, as well as wanting a return, increasingly want to know about your environmental and social credentials. Communities where you operate want to know that you are a force for good. Deloitte surveys of millennial and GenZ employees show they would rather work for an ethical company they believe in, even if it’s for less money.
We understand owners and directors have a lot on their plate.? It’s easy to sit back and wait until something or someone forces your hand on policies. It’s also easy to settle for a typical superficial tick-box approach that doesn’t drive meaningful change. Don’t delay the opportunity to create a strategic asset, foundational to sustained and resilient success.
What is our approach?
In the last article, we introduced the four pillars of our simple, rigorous approach that we call the BRAVE: Policies Accelerator. Let’s look at these four pillars in more detail:
?1.???? Shape
?Shape the overall suite of policies that fit together to address significant risks and objectives.
As organisations get larger, it’s common to see a gradual proliferation in the number of policies. Typically, no one is assigned to manage them as a suite. Policies can appear for issues that aren’t material to the business (what to wear in the office…). There can be duplication and conflict in expectations. I’ve seen conflicting expectations for gifts and entertainment between anti-bribery, expenses, and procurement policies. As a result, the team gets confused and a confused mind does not comply.
To prevent this, establish clear ownership and map policies to material risks and objectives. Make it clear how policies fit in the overall governance of the company, and define the role of policy owners and sponsors. Make it easy for the team to find and access the right policy.
Doing this rigorously means there are no overlaps, no gaps, no conflict. And no proliferation. So, no doubt in the team’s mind about what applies when.
2.???? Scribe
Write policies with an inward focus, on what the team need to know and do, for the policy to meet its objectives.?
Often policy authors, passionate about their subject, write policies only from the perspective of an expert or a regulator. The policies become long and complicated, written in “legalese”. A team member opens the policy and it’s 20, 30 pages long. They can’t read it. They don’t read it. Even if they try, they get lost in the detail and miss what matters most. And, of course, if they can’t understand it, they can’t follow it.
Our approach helps authors to write concise, clear policies from the perspective of the team. Look to extract fundamental requirements from all the detail – the high-level things that an intended user must do or not do. More in a future article on how to identify those fundamental requirements. This laser-focus enables the team to quickly grasp what matters most and why.? It enables them to make sense of, and navigate, all the many details that support the policy operating effectively.?
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Companies that apply the first two pillars well have exactly the policies they need, with each one crystal clear on what is expected.
Unfortunately, many companies stop there. Would their suite of policies change much?
Not until the policies are put into effective operation. So, if you want to change behaviours, keep going to the next two pillars…
3.???? Start
Implement each policy by engaging users in two-way dialogue and managing the change impacts of introducing it.
It’s not unusual to see companies implementing a policy by simply cascading it by email down the line from manager to direct report. If they are lucky, the recipient will read the policy, they may sign something to acknowledge they’ve received it. If it’s well-written, they may understand it. They’ll then figuratively put it in a drawer, saying “I’ll remember that when I need it” and, of course, promptly forget about it. And new joiners won’t even receive that email.
For full implementation, we help companies manage the impacts of embedding the new or updated policy. They engage and train intended users about what’s expected and what it means for them in their role. They make available the supporting detail needed for the policy to operate successfully:
This approach makes it easier for users to follow expectations than not. Our article Cultural Assurance: Do your colleagues really understand what is expected of them? highlighted research that demonstrates that this is vital for influencing behaviours and culture.
?4.???? Sustain
Measure and monitor policy effectiveness, uphold policy expectations and improve the policy over time.
This is where we see companies struggle the most. Most don’t maintain the discipline to prevent their policies “withering on the vine”. They become outdated. Violations are missed or ignored. It can non-compliance with a detail that perhaps shouldn’t be in the policy. But ignoring any non-compliance undermines the policy, the whole suite of policies, and potentially the ethical integrity of the company.
To combat this, measure policy effectiveness and monitor compliance, looking for success stories more than problems. But when there are problems, consistently make effective interventions to uphold the policy. That doesn’t mean defaulting to disciplinary action, but more on that in a future article. Establish a rigorous approach to managing policy exceptions, then requests for exceptions become a rich source of learning. That learning, together with feedback from user engagement and monitoring, is invaluable for improving the policy and keeping it relevant and effective.
That’s the simple, rigorous and proven BRAVE: Policies Accelerator.
Giving your team the confidence and the space to be innovative and creative, to deliver on your strategic objectives. In a way which protects the bottom line, protects your reputation and keeps you as owners and directors out of trouble.
Knowing your policies are effective gives you as owners and directors confidence to make commitments and take decisive action.?
In the next article, we’ll explore some of the detail in these four pillars.
Join us on a journey to transform your company policies into a strategic asset, positioning your company for sustained success.
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For more immediate information on our BRAVE perspective on company policies, please email [email protected].