Are your policies the next ‘Planning Commission’?

15^th August 2014 marked India’s 68^th Independence and our family of three was all set to tune in to Mr. Narendra Modi’s first Independence Day speech. Not to mention the man has his own charisma and has his own carrot and stick style while he shared his economic agenda with the country.

No No…this post is not about Mr. Modi nor even close to our country’s patriotic spirit but it’s about what made him scrap age old ‘Planning Commission’ which for sure was quite relevant at its inception but then 64 years were enough to make it look age old. And what is interesting that even our organizations operate similarly, with archived policies and procedures in this era when Gen Y is entering the workplace.

So what goes wrong while Human Resources still tries to put its best foot forward while creating the best of their policies.

Sadly our policy are made with intension to facilitate changes but mostly becomes road blocks in the overall scenario. It’s important to keep the objective well defined and should be achievable rather than becoming just another HR thing. After all it’s the people whom you want to touch without losing the human touch.

Change is good. A timly and proactive audit of what needs to be changed in policies will help avoid lot of complications later. So why wait for a sexual harassment case to come up before creating a committee to handle such scenarios. Mostly we ignore the initial signals or rather wait for the stage when there is no other better option but then this can be one decision making weakness which can raise unnecessary grievances.

Keep It Simple!! And that would make its more sorted. Creating policies which are confusing or verbose only irks the employees who are looking for solutions and not documentation. It’s the job of Human Resources to refer Laws and Compliances and created user friendly and crisp policies which are self explanatory and non debatable.

Are you talking enough? Well creating a policy is just one part of it but communicating the same to make it more effective plays indeed an important role. Hence care should be taken to release versions even with the most minute changes and same to be communicated keeping employee confidence in the system high.

I am sure Mr. Modi had a far larger thought behind bringing new soul to the old body but he for sure motivated me enough for this take on our age old Policy Frameworks. For sure as the organizations grow so would the country and tha