Policy pragmatics

Citation

Heap, J. (2002), "Policy pragmatics", Work Study, Vol. 51 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2002.07951gaa.001

Policy pragmatics

Policy pragmatics

All organisations have a set of policies. How many depends on a variety of factors – the size of the organisation, the nature, and complexity, of the business, and – perhaps most importantly – the culture of the organisation (you will see what I mean later). Some companies – the larger ones? – have extensive libraries of them; others have a simple set of policies – perhaps even being labelled with a weaker term such as "guidelines". The really small companies may have implicit rather than explicit polices – probably not written down.

What is the purpose of a policy?

I ask the question since I have recently been writing various policies associated with the use and misuse of computing facilities. Thus, one of the policies refers to what people can legitimately do with the company's e-mail system – and what they can not. Naturally, it says that they must not send offensive messages to their work colleagues (or any one else for that matter); they must not send e-mail pretending to be someone else; they must not misrepresent their role in the company to outsiders; and so on.

This all sounds very sensible. If they do any of these "bad things", we have a vehicle (the policy) that we can use to show that they have done wrong and can be disciplined (using our disciplinary policy and procedure, of course). We also have something to show outsiders that the company is not to blame for any offence caused externally because "we have a policy" which says this is wrong.

This is perhaps often the real reason for the existence of a policy – as a defence mechanism. This is why policies are often written in almost legal language – because it may be required in a court or tribunal or some other formal agency.

If the primary reason for the policy is to stop the wrong things happening – by informing staff of what is wrong – then policies would be written in forms that were easily understandable by those employees. It would be helpful, informative, friendly – not formal, confusing and antagonistic.

So, an organisation with a culture of staff empowerment and development may have fewer polices – written in a different style. It would compensate for the "policy gap" with more effective training of staff in business processes and procedures – training that would both explicitly and implicitly cover the issues that would otherwise be raised in policy documents. It would then trust its staff to behave appropriately.

Of course, even such a company will have the occasional member of staff who wittingly or unwittingly (is "wittingly" a word?) misbehaves and may need to be reminded of "policy". However, this can be done using some generic, "catch-all" policy that refers to what is expected of employees in their dealings with colleagues, supervisors, managers, customers or suppliers.

A change in attitude (and organisational culture) might be both liberating for employees, and liberating for the organisation. It would free the organisation from the regular rounds of policy review, drafting, amending and enforcement.

Could we write this into our productivity policy?

John Heap