Why it's okay that others don't read your policy documents

This post is written by Lewis S. Eisen, the leading authority on the use of respectful language in policy drafting.

• The problem: Policy writers often get frustrated that people in their organisations haven’t read their policies.
• Why it matters: Continually pushing written policies at people takes a lot of time with little return.
• The solution: Accept that policies are useful only for experts; provide guidance documentation for everyone else.

Too often I hear government workers in administrative services complain that their policies go unread by the rest of the organisation. The HR people are discouraged when people don’t read the HR policies. IT people have the same problem for IT policies, and similar complaints can be heard from the security, facilities, finance and even operations people.

Sometimes the complainer proposes a drastic solution: “Our office should force everybody to read the policy. That way they would know what our HR (or IT, security, etc…) requirements are.”

My response is always the same:

1. Given the choice, 99% of the people in your organisation will never read your policy.
2. Get used to it. That is not going to change.
3. It’s not a bad thing.

“But they are governed by that policy!” is the usual response back to me. “If it applies to them they should read it.”

That last statement is a bit of a leap in logic. Let's put the shoe on the other foot for a moment.

The policies we don’t read

Did you file an income tax return this year? You may have filled out the return yourself, or you might have asked someone else to do that for you. Whichever it was, tell me: Before starting, did you read through the Income Tax Act or its national equivalents?

After all, the Income Tax Act or its equivalent where you are is the official authority setting out the rules. Just like a policy, it governs income tax returns. It does apply to you, so by the logic above you should have read it first.

Back to reality: unless you're a tax lawyer or an accountant, I would be very surprised if you’ve ever read the Income Tax Act. If you read any relevant documentation, it’s most likely the little booklet that accompanies the tax form, called something like ‘How to Fill Out Your Tax Return’.

The reality is that no one outside HR wants to read your ‘Policy on Accrued Superannuation Benefits’ any more than you want to read the Income Tax Act.

The purpose of that booklet is to provide you with enough information to be able to complete the task at hand while at the same time not overloading your brain with parts of the legislation that are not pertinent to the moment. It collects information from a variety of sources and synthesises it into a single user-friendly guide, suitable for those of us who are not experts on the topic.

I doubt you're ever going to want to read any piece of legislation in its entirety. The government doesn't expect you to read it. Evidently, the fact that you may be governed by it has not been a sufficient motivator for you to crack it open.

Getting help

While you’re filling out the form, even if you come across something in that little how-to booklet that you don't understand, you’re still not going to reach for the legislation to help you. When you need help, you will find someone to ask, like a friend, colleague, or professional.

The reality is that no one outside HR wants to read your ‘Policy on Accrued Superannuation Benefits’ any more than you want to read the Income Tax Act. The people outside information management (IM)/IT are not going to read your ‘Policy on Information Security Protocols’.

The reason is very simple: when you aren't an expert in a field, you do not believe that reading the authoritative document will be a good use of your time.

The role of guidance documents

What people will read is a good office manual that contains documents written specifically to help them do a job, just like the tax booklet.

When you provide good guidance documentation explaining what people need to do and how to do it, they are far more receptive to reading that. Afterwards, if they still have questions, they will contact you for assistance instead of reaching for the policy.

If you have written good guidance documentation, the vast majority of people at your organisation will never need to see the actual policy itself.

This is as it should be. Your forte as a subject matter expert is bridging the gap between the technical language of the policy and the practical requirements of the business areas. In short, you help your clients understand what they need to do.

This is not an insignificant role. It requires professional skills to take a complex subject and make it comprehensible by writing user-friendly, plain-language documentation or providing client-focused training.

Policy sits behind the scenes

If you have written good guidance documentation, the vast majority of people at your organisation will never need to see the actual policy itself.

The only time that you will need to produce the original policy is when some dissatisfied or frustrated individual claims that your guidance is a product of your personal approach and doesn’t represent the official position of the organisation.

For example, someone reads in the office manual that tablet computers cannot be taken off the premises and they don’t like that rule. So they storm down to your office and confront you, demanding to know what the authority for that rule is.

At that moment, you can smile. You calmly reach into your back pocket — figuratively speaking — and pull the policy out to show them. You open it and point to the relevant paragraph.

“Right there,” you say. “Can you see where it says ‘portable information storage devices’? That means tablets and thumb drives.”

Spending time creating a good office manual will do more to inform people at work about what the rules are than any policy will ever do.

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