Question
Should an organization maintain two sets of policies and procedure (P&P) information—one that is developed for training and another that is developed for on-going reference?
Answer in short
An organization should develop and maintain P&P content for training and for on-going reference in one set because it is beneficial for users and provides cost and time savings to the organization. Of course, the content should be designed according to principles of performance-based learning to enable more self-learning and reduce off-the-job training time and related costs.
Common situation
Many organizational leaders unknowingly think that P&P are needed solely for compliance, auditing, or to provide protection against lawsuits. As a result, these organizations tend to communicate P&P as one body of information—not information that can also be used to train learners. Often, the training group re-develops the same subject matter to train employees. When this is the case, the company is not investing in the real value that P&P information can and should provide to the organization.
Provide what learners prefer
Learners perform better when they can use one source of information—information that best conveys what’s needed to do their jobs. Learners prefer information that is designed based upon how the information relates to them and how to apply the information—not on what they need to know about. A single source to help them learn and reference based upon what they need to do to perform is the answer.
Advantages of one P&P source
Because users prefer working with one source of P&P information, a single-source ensures that your organization avoids the likely occurrence that there will be conflicting information in several sources about the same subject. Maintaining one source reduces the cost of development time and ensures that the information is easier to store, revise, publish, and access.
Conclusion
Communicating organizational practices with P&P content as a single-source will enable employees to have consistent information, reduce off-the-job training time, provide employees with self-learning tools, and save organizational time and money.
To assist your organization in providing one policies and procedures information source that can be used for both learning and reference, contact Urgo & Associates.