How do you communicate with your employees?  Do they all know the policies and procedures as you want them to be known?  Is everyone on the same page, so to speak?

Recently I watched an interview of Larry O’Donnell, President and COO of Waste Management.  He, as part of a new TV show, went undercover as a new hire in 4 different entry level positions within the company.  While working in these positions, he learned some things that took him by surprise.  One of the biggest things that he learned was that some of what these employees believed to be corporate policies, we not policies at all.  This happened to him on at least 2 of the 4 positions he visited and realized that he needed to make some changes.

In this case, Waste Management having 45,000 employees and facilities all over the country, I can understand how communication would be difficult at best.  It seems that no matter how well written your policies and procedures are, to some extend, they are open to interpretation and certainly are not meant to be.

Most of us do not have businesses this size so communication can be handled for the most part face to face.  Still, there seems to be times when not everyone is on the same page.  It’s the whole deal of a story being told over and over by different people that pretty soon the story is unrecognizable to the person that started it.

How do you insure that all of you employees know your policies and procedures the way you want them known?  Do you write them down in great detail?  Are you constantly and consistently training?  Do you train a few and then let them train the others?

We’ll talk more on this subject in the future but for now, we would like to hear how you handle this.  Share your experiences by leaving a comment below or feel free to use the “Contact Us” page if you prefer.  We look forward to hearing from you.

photo credit alexkess’ photostream