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RE: Results: Cost Assumptions to creating a Policy Procedure Stat ement
Subject:RE: Results: Cost Assumptions to creating a Policy Procedure Stat ement From:"Bailie, Rahel" <r_bailie -at- trillium -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 21 Dec 2000 17:18:36 -0800
Chris Anderson wrote:
>>Does anyone doubt the usefulness or value of a Policy and Procedure
Manual?<<
The short answer is "it depends." A couple of jobs ago, I saw millions of
dollars overspent because of a few, key poorly worded policies. Currently,
my partner is working on a P&P/best practices manual the will save a large
company hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars because of the
time, money, employee turnover, etc. that will be salvaged once people use
the book. (And in this case, believe me, they WANT the book!)
>>Are there any metrics to suggest the true value?<<
Useful metrics would probably have to come from within. The two examples I
cited above would be meaningless for your situation because one was a
provincial agency whose workers had to determine which clients were entitled
to services based on some murky policies and less-than-helpful procedures,
and the other is a food services chain wanting to streamline certain data
conversion processes. Within their organizations, they could do a
before-and-after analysis.
You could try measuring outcomes of a handful of procedures, then rewriting
them and comparing the outcomes for those particular procedures. Choose
procedures that you can assign some concrete measurement to, and if you can,
choose an area that is relatively discrete.
Rahel Bailie
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