The Personnel Policy

Most of the medium and large organizations has a written personnel policy. The size and effectiveness of such policy depend on the organization size and culture. The bigger the organization the more detailed is its policy. The policy start small and simple but grow up and get more complicated with time. New procedures or rules are written frequently to cover the organizational needs. Expansions and new ventures require new rules and regulations; however, most of the new procedures are written to regulate or organize new situations that led to or going to lead to a problem. This fact explain why most of the personnel polices are complexed and confusing. The personnel policy was written in a reactive (or firefighting) mode. Some of the rules in policy are not applicable now or could cause more damage that it can regular and prevent. Some internet sites offer a ready-made “cookie cutter” policy that the starting companies can use with some customization. I doubt that a policy written for specific culture in a specific industry would be useful for anther culture and industry, but unfortunately, sometimes this happens! The best way to write a personnel policy is to have a specialist in Organizational Behavior to study the organizations culture and nature of work then write the full policy. The policy would be updated as needed but the specialist or consultant should be called whenever the organization anticipate change at work. The policy would need periodic revisions to rewrite or drop some of the old rules and regulations.