Clarity in Policy and Procedure Documents

1. Clarity in Policy and Procedure Documents Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012

2. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Overview • Last week we talked about policy and procedure documents. • These documents govern the internal operations and rules of an organization. • Clarity is the highest virtue of these documents. • Why?

3. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Overview • Avoid disputes! • A poorly written instructions or policy guidelines can cause costly and time-consuming disputes. • Not to mention animosity, annoyance, and frustration. • Organizations work better when everyone has the same understanding of policies and procedures.

4. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Clarity in word choice • So how do you achieve clarity in writing a policy/procedure document? • Last week we observed how writers of these documents make use of defined terms and obvious words of obligation. • But individual word choices in your documents also contribute to clarity or confusion.

5. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious actors • In all cases in which you place an obligation on someone, you should be clear about who that someone is. • If they are identified as a group, think carefully about how you are defining the group. • Who is included and excluded? What term can you use to define it at a proper scope?

6. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious actors • Consider this instruction: • Travel expense forms must be submitted by the first Friday of every month. • What’s the problem in terms of the actor?

7. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious actors • An improvement: • Everyone must submit their travel expense forms by the first Friday of every month. • Ok, but who is “everyone”? • Silly question? Maybe, maybe not. • What if this rule were written between two sections on hourly employees? Could “everyone” be interpreted to mean “all hourly employees.” • What if “everyone” is supposed to mean all non-exempt salaried employees? • How could we do better?

8. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious actors • One solution: • All employees must submit their travel expense forms by the first Friday of every month. • Then include a defined term at the beginning of the document: As used in this manual, “employee” means all non-exempt, salaried employees of Big Corp. • Or your rule could state the subject more precisely: • All non-exempt, salaried employees of Big Corp. must submit their travel expense forms by the first Friday of every month.

9. Real world example

10. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 • Who is the actor in the first sentence? • Does it mean each employee who supervises people and each employee who prepares district financial reports or transactions? • Or does it mean each employee who supervises district financial reports and who prepares district financial reports? • Could this matter? How could we rewrite it?

11. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious objects and predicates • As with your subject actors, you should clearly identify the objects and other predicate words of your sentence. • Thinking carefully about what level of description is necessary to identify your concepts. • Be careful about using pronouns: “it” • This is a balancing act. You don’t want to go overboard with precision and make the document too difficult to read.

12. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious objects and predicates • Consider this sentence: • Any employee requesting more than one week of leave must submit their paperwork at least two weeks prior. • What interpretative problems does this sentence present?

13. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious objects and predicates • First, what is “paperwork”? • Second, prior to what? • How could we improve the sentence: • Any employee requesting more than one week of leave must submit their paperwork at least two weeks prior.

14. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious objects and predicates • This illustration also shows the importance of defining deadlines carefully. • Good practice is to tie them to some definite, objective date. • First Friday of each month. Yes. • By the beginning of the week. No. • By close of business … Yes. • As soon as practicable. ???

15. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Obvious objects and predicates • The following is an example from the Cy-Fair School District’s handbook on employee use of electronic media. • You can see how this rule was drafted with carefully defined terms. • Perhaps indicating how much of an issue this has become in recent times. • Does this show that rapidly changing environments (like electronic media) make it difficult to keep policies up-to-date?

17. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Ambiguity versus vagueness • As you strive to write clearly, it is helpful to understand the difference between ambiguity and vagueness. • You want to avoid both. • Ambiguity is a word that is susceptible to two or more meanings. • When you can’t pin a word down to any particular meaning, it is vague. • Ambiguity = This can mean either x or y. • Vagueness = I can’t tell what this means.

18. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Ambiguity versus vagueness • Our example above has a vague requirement: • Any employee requesting more than one week of leave must submit their paperwork at least two weeks prior. • “Two week prior” is vague, not ambiguous, because we simply cannot tell what it refers to. • More examples: • The contest will be open to young people. • Excessive errors in employee expense reports will subject the employee to a performance audit.

19. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Ambiguity versus vagueness • Easiest way to see ambiguity is to look at dictionary entries. Many words have multiple meanings listed. • Each one of those is a potentially ambiguous term. • We often rely on context to resolve questions of ambiguity. But in some cases, two or more possible meanings might apply. • Think carefully about the terms you are using and whether they could be subject to different meanings in the same situation.

20. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Ambiguity versus vagueness • Examples of ambiguity: • Mug • container for coffee or • a person’s face. • Account • Noun: a record of debit and credit entries • Noun: a statement regarding an event. • Verb: to take into consideration. • Etc.

21. Advanced Business Communication Spring 2012 Practice • Revise the following policy statements for greater clarity. • All timesheets should be received by the end of the week. • In the event of an emergency, 911 should be contacted and all employees should remain inside the building.