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