Safety and the Role of Documentation
No matter what industry you are in, the safety of your organisation’s employees is paramount. So having a good safety management system in place is essential. Clear, accurate and accessible documentation is vital for successful outcomes and improved safety.
Workers need to be able to easily find, understand and execute procedures that accurately reflect how employees actually perform their work. Compliance ensures consistency, safety and a quality end-product.
What’s more, internal auditors, as well as regulators, rely on documentation for clear, concise evidence that a business is operating in compliance with requirements.
Yet whilst this is simple enough in theory, we know that several challenges get in the way.
The Challenges
One of the challenges in writing this type of material is getting people first to read it and then follow the rules or act intelligently on the information.
Policies and procedures can be full of complexity and present a ‘wall of information’ or a mixture of information types making it hard for a reader to find the content they are seeking. Sentences can be long and repetitive, language can be technical, content can be contradictory and there can be inconsistencies in language and format.
In addition, legislation and regulation is complex and ever-changing, so keeping up with the evolution of policies and procedures can be time-consuming and challenging. This is especially so when documents are inconsistent in format and language and are not easily accessed or updated. As a result, important information can be incorrect or out of date, which means increased risk for employees and the organisation.
So how can you use better documentation to mitigate risk?
Best Practice
Ensuring you and your team follow a best practice approach to documentation can have a significant impact on compliance and safety.
It will make it easy for employees to quickly find, understand and use the information they need to do their jobs effectively and safely. It will also help your organisation to make frequent updates to documents in an easy and consistent manner.
Effective documents should:
- be written in clear, concise, simple language
- be standardised and consistent in structure, format, language and writing style
- make it easy for the reader to find relevant information (and skim irrelevant information) by including contents tables and descriptive and accurate subheadings
- break information into bite sized pieces presented in a logical, intuitive order
- make critical information stand out
- avoid information that may be quickly outdated (such as names and dates).
Policies and Procedures
Policies should:
- focus on the rule and describe what should or must be done rather than what not to do
- make it clear what must be done (required) vs what should be done (recommended).
Procedures should:
- assist employees to perform activities in a step-by-step manner, with example visuals and tables where possible
- be action and outcome-oriented with consistent repeatable predictable results
- be unambiguous.
Lastly, many documents are very long as they include content for a wide variety of audiences and situations. Sifting through these large documents to find relevant information or make updates can be time-consuming and frustrating. Consider breaking sizeable documents into several smaller documents that can be cross-referenced and referred to.
What Does Best Practice Look Like?
Below are examples of a policy and procedure document, before and after best practice was implemented.
Amongst other things, the After documents show how information can be broken into chunks with labels providing a summary and an aid to skimming. Visual techniques such as tables and bulleted lists also make the information more accessible.
PROCEDURES
Click here to see a more detailed best practice procedure.
POLICIES
In the case of a policy, clarity and understanding are enhanced with examples of compliant and non-compliant situations.
Click here to see a more detailed best practice policy.
See How Your Documents Can Be Improved
For 25 years TechWriter has helped businesses improve their documentation. We use a structured approach to designing, writing and reviewing documents and online content, based on international research into how people read and absorb information.
Send us one of your typical documents and we will benchmark it against best practice to show how it can be improved – at no cost to you, of course.
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