Friday, December 5, 2008

Reinvent Your Policy Manual!

We can’t believe it is already December! Why not spend the remaining weeks streamlining your policy manual? In many companies, this archaic document is the biggest barrier to becoming a customer-centric organization. Here are some guidelines to begin to reinvent your policy manual:
Remove any policy that does not add value to the customer, supplier or coworker. Replace old verbiage with "work hard and be clever."
Review the manual for "rules" that hinder the delivery of exceptional customer service. If you allow your frontline staff to say, "We cannot help you because it is against our policy,” your culture needs a shake-up. Begin by enabling employees to “use good judgment" in everything they do, from team interactions to solving customer problems.
Identify any policy that infers that you do not trust your employees. Particularly examine your expense account policy. We know of one company that decided to allow employees to issue their own expense checks. They had guidelines for tax documentation that were followed by all. The result was the elimination of most of the accounting approvals and a reduction in overall travel expenses. Over the years, we have worked with several companies in which senior managers have multi-million dollar budgets and are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of product production, yet they must obtain corporate approval for $500 to attend a workshop! This policy makes absolutely no sense.
Try adding the words "have fun" to your policy manual. It has been said that if you find a job where you can have fun, you’ll never have to work again.
A friend of ours is a business school dean of a prestigious university. His entire policy manual is “work hard, be clever, use good judgment and have fun.” Nordstrom’s policy manual is one page; it reads: “use good judgment in all situations. There will be no other rules.”
The typical corporate policy manual is written to send “warnings” to employees when they should send “encouragements.” Trust your workers, and they will reward you with superior performance.
So…start the New Year out right and reinvent your policy manual!