Saint Mary's

This course is about writing policies and procedures, not about developing them.

Well-written policy documents guide an organization’s decision-making and help bring consistency to those decisions. They also provide much needed direction for employees, customers, and others.

The course includes a discussion of policy-writing challenges and how to address them. The organization of ideas and information will be explored using mind mapping and policy-specific formatting. You will learn how to write clear and effective policy documents and develop a template for policy preparation. The difference between policies and procedures will also be reviewed and participants will write a detailed procedure.

This course can also help you decipher the often legalistic, dense, and complex, language of your organization’s policies and procedures.

Writing Effective Policies and Procedures is a required seminar for the Certificate in Policy Development and Implementation.

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Program Content

Understanding policy and procedure, how they overlap and how they differ

• Identifying the sections of a typical policy document and what goes in each section
• Writing policy documents and procedures that are clear and effective
• Improving the process of writing policies and procedures

Resources

• Checklist to determine need for a policy or a procedure document
• Plain language writing techniques
• How to do mind-mapping
• Steps for writing policies that people can read quickly and easily
• Sample formats for policies
• Sample policy template

What You Will Learn

• The key problems with policy writing
• What policy users are looking for in a policy
• Sample formats for policies
• Sample formats for procedures

Who Should Attend?

You will benefit from this seminar if you are:

• responsible for writing policies and procedures as part of your job
• beginning to revise your organization’s policies and procedures documents
• oversee or are involved in policy development, policy writing, implementation, or monitoring