An outline to writing business policies

Running a business comes down to a number of things, one of which is your ability to write effective business policies. There are several business policies, many of which will allow your company to gain the necessary funding it needs to move forward.

External business policies
To keep a business running smoothly and effectively, you will need a number of different external business policies. These policies are normally referred to as judiciary policies or trade associations. These policies help you understand the basic guidelines of running a business like deducting taxes, discrimination laws, etc.

Internal business policies
These are the policies that will keep your business running. Internal business policies include business proposals, job descriptions, and your business plan. Every business must have these documents as it allows the company to properly manage all of the details. Provide information about the reason why you are in business and the benefits you provide to the industry. The business proposal is one document you must have when you are looking for financings. It will discuss the financial details of a business along with the different opportunities that are available for your business.

Your marketing plan is one document that you need to pay attention to. A marketing plan will discuss how you plan to gain customers. You need to have a budget that will allow for various types of advertising from newspaper campaigns to online pay-per-click marketing campaigns, carefully evaluate where your target audience is and how you can reach them.

The different internal policies will provide your company with credibility and it will help to establish your company in the industry. When you are looking for financing to expand your company or to boost your customer's satisfaction, you must have these documents to take with you to attract investors.

Appealed business policies
It is common to have appealed policies after you have been in business for a few years. Appealed policies happen when you have employees that provide suggestions about the organization of departments or the business in some manner. If the suggestions are reasonable, you can change some of the policies you currently have. Many companies do a formal announcement of the appealed policies, especially if one of the employees has given the suggestion to change the policy.

Explicit business policies
As your employees learn their different roles and responsibilities within an organization, the explicit policies will help them perform their jobs. There are different policies you will have like a credit policy or a sales policy. Then there is the customer satisfaction policy. This policy will talk about the various rights of your customers like what they can do about returning a product, your refund policy, etc. You need to have this and other policies in writing to protect your business as some people will ask for them and many regard them as legal documents.

One policy you need to spend time on is the acceptable behavior of employees. Include things like how much sick leave they have, paid time off, and your dress code policy. Alter this policy as you start to learn from employees that like to push the boundaries as far as possible. There are several things that you may not think about that you will start to learn through experience as a manager and if you don't write down the do's and don't's of an organization, employees will make up their own rules.

Implicit business policies
When you have certain business policies you follow, you don't always have to write them down. There are a few things that are just known like how to recruit employees and not stealing company products and money. Most of the employees know these policies, even though they are not formally written.