POLICIES & PROCEDURES - HOW WE DO THINGS AROUND HERE

I remember my first big project back at Kāhui. I was tasked with updating the policies and procedures of a Māori health provider who had been a long-standing client and friend of Kāhui Tautoko. Me? Updating policies and procedures? What even…are those?

I head out with a very basic understanding of my task – to gather information to update the policies and procedures of our client. Daunting as the task was, I went eagerly with a USB in hand to gather information. With some direction from my team and the staff of our client, I was successful in obtaining a variety of documents that would help me understand the secret to policies and procedures.

Turns out, policies and procedures are a set of documents that an organisation has that explains what they do, sometimes why they do it, and then how they do it. They’re guidelines or rules that are established by an organisation that align with internal tikanga (customs), relevant legislation, or contractual obligations. They are unique to the particular organisation because they are tailored to how they perform certain tasks. Policies and procedures show readers that this is how we do things around here.

There can be policies for everything – how financial records are maintained, how disputes or conflicts are managed, or even how staff might answer the phone. We help organisations establish three categories of policies and procedures:

1. General: the organisation’s internal processes outlining how they do the day-to-day work that they do.
2. Quality Management: a specific set of guidelines that respond to the sections of an accreditation framework. 
3. Service Delivery: guidelines that relate to specific programmes delivered by the organisation, sometimes due to requirements outlined in a programme’s contract.

Visiting our client helped me understand how they operated. The documents and kōrero (discussion) outlined administrative processes, internal forms, strategic documents, service contracts – all kinds of information for us to capture and then articulate what they do, how they do it, and sometimes why they do it. The policies and procedures that we helped develop aligned with their kaupapa (purpose), their values, their contracts, their legislation, their community perspectives, and their unique character.

Policies and procedures are guidelines that are unique to a particular organisation. They cover a variety of kaupapa or topics and outline what, how and why things are done the way they are in the organisation. Overall, they help tell the reader understand ‘how we do things around here’.