Executive Summary

Policy affects every area of a corporation. It can cause drastic cultural change or it can be a few words spoken that do nothing to affect how the business runs. In either case, the managers of the corporation’s various teams are crucial to a policy’s influence. Managers are the key communicators, the chief cheerleaders, and the major drivers of many of the policies with which executives envision. While it could be done without their assistance, implementing policy without the help of the corporation’s management team would be tan amount to attempting to escape quicksand. There are three major phases involved in a policy’s lifecycle: Creation, Adoption, and Infusion. During the Creation phase, the policy is planned out, pushed out, and policed; while during the Adoption phase, managers heavily assist in the communication and approach needed by each policy. During the Infusion phase, the policy is compared directly to the culture of the corporation and evaluated for success. If necessary, the policy may change; however, the culture may need a modification as well to continue positive growth and innovation.

Introduction to Policy

Corporations are living entities; they take in, expel, and reproduce. Policy within the corporation is the brain activity, sending jolts of electricity to the various parts of the corporate body. The body reacts according to the signal received, as do different sub-divisions within a corporate structure when policy is introduced. While the policy is intended to convey a specific set of ideas and protocols for how to handle specific situations, policy can quickly become misinterpreted if there is a problem with the sending mechanism. Policies go through several phases during creation. It goes through a creation phase, where it is developed, deployed, and enforcement plans are laid out. Next, it goes through the adoption phase. During this phase, it is all about socializing the policy. Finally, it goes through a longer, more thorough infusion phase, where it is fully integrated and accepted by every person impacted.

Creation

When a policy is produced, it goes through three stages within the creation phase. The policy is first developed. In this stage every angle of the policy is considered and analyzed. It is crucial to understand how the policy would affect the corporation and determine ways to mitigate any potential problems. For example, if a corporation has a policy of only hiring men for their positions, because of the physically demanding nature of the job, they must determine if that policy will have any detractions. What happens if a female comes along who is physically capable to complete the job duties and is not hired? Unless the organization has a legitimate reason for not hiring her, it would violate the Equal Opportunities Act and the corporation could face legal action.

During the development stage, one must also consider whether this policy is strictly a national policy or an international policy. If it is an international policy, does it conflict with other policies already included in that space? How does it affect the workforce of other countries? Most often, adding an international policy causes an increase in development time and money to implement. Understanding that every country involved is different is only the beginning; there is also a need to modify the policy, where appropriate, to accommodate for social, political, and environmental changes from country to country.

The next stage is to determine how the policy can be deployed. What are the costs associated with implementation? How long would it take to deploy the policy? There are some policies that do not need additional implementation, other than releasing the policy and making people aware of it, for example, a dress code policy. Others require money, technology, and human interaction to implement. For example, if a policy states that all employees must use a laptop powered by Windows 7 as their main computer, money is required for purchasing the laptop, Windows 7 licenses, and any other licenses needed to run their business for each employee. Again, from an international perspective, deployment can be a complexity that will possibly expand the timeline. If the aforementioned policy is in place and an employee works in rural Nepal, they may not have access to a laptop with Windows 7. In such cases, the organization should either add a mitigation line to the policy that reads, “where applicable” or should furnish noncompliant individuals with the Windows 7 powered laptop.

The final stage to be considered of the creation phase is the policy enforcement. Arguably, this is the most important of the three stages. An executive can create policies all day, but if none of them are enforced, the corporate body is free to do whatever it wants. Lack of enforcement is akin to Tourette’s syndrome of the corporate body; the leadership is not able to control what comes out. Enforcement needs to be consistent and fair. There also needs to be a policy appeal process that goes through a review, possibly changing the policy. While the appeal process happens after the policy is enforced, it is important to note that the mechanism that allows for appeals is created as a part of this phase.

Managers play a key role in this and the subsequent phases. While executives are the creators of the policy, the managers of the various teams assist in deployment and enforcement efforts. Managers are the main source of communication, changes, and appeals to the policy. Specifically, enforcement is where the most time is spent. Making sure an employee adheres to policy is the most common task across any leadership role. Because of this, the manager must know all the policies that relate to their group and those that are general to the corporation. In Neuschel’s work, “The Servant Leader: Unleashing the Power of Your People,” he discusses the differences between management and leadership and how to best utilize one’s employees. This plays especially into an international corporation. Because of the differences in the culture, it is important to really empower the employee to follow the policy, or to exempt them from it. In chapter six, Neuschel (2005) describes the way a manager should be leading, “The manager/leader must meet and effectively deal with the immediate day-to-day issues. No organization can long survive if today’s issues are not dealt with immediately, competently, and vigorously” (p. 42). He goes on to say:

There is a compelling need to set up a framework within which responsibilities can be delegated on an orderly basis. By operating within such a framework, managers down the line can share in the decision-making in a reasonably orderly way. This permits, even encourages the multiplying power of submanagers— subleaders—in sharing the decision-making and, in the process, adding to their growth. (2005, p. 42)

Managers should encourage, guide, and empower their employees to follow the policies. Creating a development path and clear, attainable goals for the employee to achieve, the manager should work to ensure, at every level, the employee is equipped with policy.

Adoption

The next major phase in the lifecycle of a policy is the adoption phase. Much like the aforementioned phase, the managers play a crucial role at this stage. Wide adoption and socialization of a policy is as much a function of management as signing timecards. Managers are the voice of the executives carried down to the level of their group. At this time, the policy team should create a unique approach for each new policy.

Linguistic information is a powerful means to convey social information in our culture. When we lack first-person experience regarding a situation or another person, we often turn to information provided by others to form an opinion. (Ruz, 2011)

Some policies can be shared and spread via email or a corporate intranet; while other policies require a different approach entirely. Policies, such as those concerning sexual harassment, may require face to face time with whom is a subject matter expert in the field to avoid personal opinion conflicts with intended meaning of the policy.

The logistics of getting employees to that training should fall either on human resources and/or the manager. Human resources should handle the explanation of how employees can and should be involved; however, it ultimately falls on the manager to ensure the employee actually gets to the training and understands the importance thereof.

Another critical stage to the adoption phase is communication. Creating an actionable communication plan to disperse and gain employee acceptance should be firmly established prior to the deployment stage of the creation phase. However, during the adoption phase, it becomes active and the role of communication falls predominantly on management. The manager should be aware of employee behaviors on a day-to-day basis, in order to correct when necessary. Constant communication between the managers and the policy creators is a much needed path that seldom happens. If communication can be maintained and widespread acceptance of the policy can be gained, the next phase will be more straightforward.

Infusion

The final phase to be considered is infusion. Each corporation has a culture, whether positive or negative. The culture is how the corporation’s employees act and react to each other and to outside influences, a social belonging, and a collective grouping of employees who work together day in and day out. The culture of a corporation should be considered very carefully during the infusion phase. If one were to inject cultural elements that were directly competing with the corporate culture at work at the time, the policy would be doomed to fail. For example, if there is a dress code policy stating that each employee must wear a suit and the culture of the company is relaxed and prefers to wear jeans, it may take more time to integrate with the groups. Culture is a complex concept; it is a combination of many factors, including environment and socio-economic position. Adapting a policy to the culture should be considered as an alternative to any policies where it is appropriate. However, there are some policies that necessitate cultural change. Psychologists often adapt their treatments to suit the culture of their patient. While it is a different field entirely, the following article explains the need to adapt and change:

When deciding when and how to culturally adapt treatments, psychotherapists should recognize the tension between population fit and treatment fidelity. If a traditional intervention such as cognitive therapy is adapted in content and format with an Asian American client by infusing the Buddhist principle of mindfulness, for example, then there comes a point at which the causal explanations of cognitive therapy may no longer predominate in the adapted treatment (therapy may facilitate meditative relaxation/awareness over the explicit refutation of irrational thoughts). (Smith, Rodríguez, & Bernal, 2011)

As described, it is very important to understand the balance between how the culture works and how the culture ought to be modified. Change is inevitable, but how one reacts to change is the key factor needing to be understood when it comes to infusion. If culture does not change, then outdated policy, poor standards, and other negative elements would continue to thrive and cause a net problem to the corporation. For example, while the culture of the 1800’s United States allowed for slavery, the culture needed to change. If it was not pushed and enforced at every level, the inequality of the Old World would continue in the new. While slavery and racism were not necessarily the issue in the old world, the core attitude associated with them needed to change to bring equality and unity to all citizens in the United States.

During the infusion phase, gaps between the policy, standards, and practices are identified. If a policy states that all website development must pass through W3C scanning, then the developers must learn to code in ways that make the scan successful. Another major point to consider with infusion is the amount of time and expense it will take to bring a team into compliance with a policy. Some policies may require a long-term investment; others may require changes to the IT controls. However, the manager, yet again, plays a huge role in this phase. Managers are the individuals who suggest and make strides towards the necessary changes; they are the ones who directly hold the power of success or failure in their hands regarding policy.

References

Neuschel, R. P. (2005). Servant Leader : Unleashing the Power of Your People. Northwestern University Press.

Ruz M, Moser A, Webster K, 2011 Social Expectations Bias Decision-Making in Uncertain Inter-Personal Situations. PLoS ONE 6(2): e15762. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015762

Smith, T. B., Rodríguez, M., & Bernal, G. (2011). Culture. Journal Of Clinical Psychology, 67(2), 166-175. doi:10.1002/jclp.20757

Inside the mind of a non sequitur

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Policy and the Manager