Hey folks. I am Lisa Smith and we are talking about the cornerstones of Be Audit Secure.
Here we go. I get really passionate about policies and procedures in your workplace. Oh my. I had an organization that came to class one day and I won’t tell you who, where, what any of that. But, if you go to the condiment aisle at one of your major grocers and you just kind of do this, (looking around) you will eventually see their product. That’s all I can say. That being not said, they came to class and we started talking about policies and procedures. Privately, the woman who was representing the company came to me and said, we don’t have any. I said, what, wait a minute. I must have misunderstood you. Do you have an employee manual? What are you telling me you don’t have? She said, no, we don’t have employee policies and procedures. What do you do when you on-board someone? How do you give them your expectations?
Even like vacation and sick time, family medical leave? Where do you write all of that stuff down and how do they know how you run your company, what is expected and what is not tolerated? What do you do? She told me they have a one page laminated checklist that new employees read. Needless to say, by the time she left class that day, she had what she needed to go back and build a good set of policies and procedures.
Early on in my career, I didn’t see the value of policies and procedures, but very quickly it became apparent as I began to study case law and saw court case after court case where the other attorney would argue,”They didn’t even have policies and procedures”. I saw how important it was to be able to defend yourself. Then an attorney said something to me one day in conversation that I thought was pretty important. She said “Your policies and procedure manuals will either be your star witness or the thing that buries you if you are ever brought to court or if you are ever audited or investigated”. I am going to leave it right there.
Do you have policies and procedures in your organization? Are they good? Are they new? Are they fresh? Is your policy and procedure manual a living and breathing document that will come to court and knock it out of the ball park for you, or is it old and stale and will come to court and make a mockery of you?
Tell me what you think in the comments below.
I’m Lisa Smith.
Until next time, Be Audit Secure.
About LISA SMITH
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