Have you wondered if there was a way to write policies without worry? On this show Beka Lemons, Director of the Huntington City Township Public Library in Indiana, talks about Writing Policy Without Worry. Good policies are an essential part of library operations. Beka provides concrete steps and practical tips that will make your process of policy writing far less worrying.
Transcript
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Adriane Herrick Juarez:
This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. You’re listening to Library Leadership podcast where we talk about libraries and leadership and speak with guests who share their ideas, innovations and strategic insights in the profession.
Have you wondered if there was a way to write policies without worry? On this show Beka Lemons, Director of the Huntington City Township Public Library in Indiana, talks about Writing Policy Without Worry. Good policies are an essential part of library operations. Beka provides concrete steps and practical tips that will make your process of policy writing far less worrying. Enjoy the show!
Beka, welcome to the show.
Beka Lemons:
Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #1: I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for talking with me today about writing policy without worry. I’m interested in this topic because good policies are an essential part of library operations. As we begin, can you share the potential policies have for aiding our organizations? 01:26
Beka Lemons:
In my opinion, there are three categories of benefit for organizations in having great policies—legality, accountability and consistency. First, legality can help us to ensure that we have some legal protections in our policies. It’s important to remember that policies are not legally binding. However, if we have good policies regarding things like discrimination, harassment and other issues, we can show that our organizations intend to follow the law. In addition, we need to make sure that all of our policies actually do follow the law. This can be a little bit tricky, so I always recommend review by an attorney for any policies.
Secondly, accountability helps us to make our employees and managers accountable to the expectations of the organization. Creating solid policies around work behavior expectations makes it much easier for us to both communicate our expectations and correct behavior that doesn’t meet those expectations. Policy can also make us accountable to our patrons in how we interact with them and create expectations for their behavior in the library.
The third factor is the most important to me, and that is consistency. Policy can create consistent processes and decision-making. Good policy will create a consistent way of doing things that empowers everyone to make decisions without worrying about the choices that they make. It will also ensure fair decision-making when all decisions can be made within the framework of the policy.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #2: Why do you think writing policies can sometimes feel like a worrying process? 03:24
Beka Lemons:
Policies are complicated documents. You sometimes see them with lots of legal language and paragraph after paragraph of stipulations. It can be really confusing to read them, much less think about writing them. And especially in libraries, we may not have all of the vocabulary for policies, HR, finance and business, so the thing that I see most often is people just overthinking and overcomplicating policies because they feel like they need to produce this big, complicated legal document, but that isn’t always the case.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #3: That said, you’re here to help us take the worry out of writing policy. Will you please go over the basics of writing policies? 04:05
Beka Lemons:
I have a six-step process that I like to tell people that should make policy writing easy—at least as easy as we can make it. The first thing to do is to identify your goals and your needs. Having a good understanding of what your policy needs to accomplish will help you to narrow your thoughts and concentrate only on the necessary topics and elements. When you’re finished writing your policy, go back to your original goals and make sure that they are fully addressed in the final policy.
Secondly, we need to gather our content. Do some research. We are librarians, after all, and find examples of similar policies. Brainstorm some content. Write down everything. You can always edit it later. Most importantly, you need to get input from other staff and stakeholders. Policy should never, ever be written in a vacuum. There are always people who will be affected and should have a say in it.
Your third step is the most complicated one, and that’s writing the policy. This is going to be the most time-consuming part of the process. But if you have done your duty in gathering content, it should be easier. Just remember that your policies have to be read and understood. Write them simply and clearly. Don’t overcomplicate or try to get tricky. I will share some more tips for writing the policy in a minute.
The fourth step in the process is to get edits and reviews. Before you present anything to a board for approval make sure that you share your drafts with stakeholders and colleagues. Ask for feedback and have someone else check your work. Take whatever feedback you get with an open mind and be willing to make changes.
The fifth step is something that is often overlooked but is a critical part of the process, and that is implementation. Once a policy has been made official, it needs to be put into practice. Communication and training are absolutely critical at this stage. Your staff cannot be expected to follow and enforce a policy that they don’t know or understand. Send out an email to staff or present the policy in staff meetings immediately after they are approved. Take the time to fully explain any parts of the policy that people might be confused by. Allow people to ask questions and answer those questions quickly. Policies are not meant to be hidden. They’re meant to be used. If you don’t feel comfortable being transparent about a policy, it’s probably a bad one.
And the final part of the process is also often overlooked, and that is updating. Policies should be living documents and can be updated as needed. Don’t let your policies sit untouched forever and ever. Circumstances change and your policies should too. I personally recommend that every policy be reviewed at least once every three years. Even if there’s no changes to it, you should still look at it.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #4: What are your top tips and tricks for making all this as painless as possible? 07:27
Beka Lemons:
So there are a lot of different things that you can do to make your policy writing a little less painful. First of all, this is my favorite one that I tell people all the time—don’t reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of policies out in the world that you can use to help create a base for your own policy. Look around and gather the things that work for you and ignore the things that don’t. Search for policies online or ask your colleagues in similar libraries to share their policies. We are information professionals and I find that we like to share knowledge on these things. It is always easy to find someone who will share their policy with you.
Another thing to think about is that it’s best to write to the most basic audience understanding. Try to keep it around a sixth grade reading level. We’re not writing for lawyers here. Don’t use a lot of jargon and legalese. Avoid overly complicated sentences and big words. People can’t follow a policy that they can’t read. You also don’t want to put too many ideas in one policy. Write separate policies for things if it starts getting too long. You should probably have separate policies for material loan fines and fees, other circulation policies—don’t just lump them all together. An ideal policy shouldn’t be more than one or two pages long.
You can create an outline of all the necessary parts and fill it in from there. Personally, I like to do a brain dump of everything I can think of, or find in other policies and just organize everything into my outline before finalizing the language of the policy. Another thing to remember is that it’s best to refer to legal requirements through citation in the policy rather than writing it all out. That way, if the legal requirement changes, your policy is not out of date. For example, we may say something like, ABC library follows all of the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That way we don’t have to write out the whole Americans with Disabilities Act. We can just say that we follow it and everyone will know.
Another thing is that you need to make sure that everything in your policy is enforceable. Don’t add any stipulations that you can’t or won’t keep track of and enforce. Are you really chasing down every person that talks on their phone in the library? If not, then you shouldn’t have a policy against it. It’s also important to make sure that your policy aligns with your procedures. Change your procedures if necessary. For example, if you change the requirement for providing ID to get a library card. Have you updated the procedures for circulation staff to go through the card application process? On the flip side, if you change a process, make sure it doesn’t contradict your policy.
A very important thing is to always store your policies in a common location that can be accessed easily by anyone who needs to understand it. I highly recommend both paper and digital storage. We keep a binder of policies at every public desk and a digital copy on our staff intranet. There are several ways to future-proof your policies. Never include the names of specific staff members, only their position title. Don’t include any information that might become dated quickly, like specific dates, times, or location. Also don’t include information that is included in other policies, as you will then have to remember to update both of them when something changes. Like legal requirements, you will want to refer to other policies within your policy. For example, your material loan policy may refer back to your fines and fees policy rather than restating all of the details.
And finally, another thing that you should absolutely do is to create a standard format for all of your policies. This makes them easier to read and to understand. They should all look the same and have the same header with a policy title and information about when it was made effective and last edited.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #5: As we do this, how can we ensure that our policies are fair and equitable? 11:57
Beka Lemons:
There are several things that we can do to make policies fair and equitable. First, I think we need to avoid making policies punitive. Flip the script a little bit and think about how you can write a policy to create a positive situation for everyone rather than how you can punish people who break the rules. For example, instead of saying that cell phones are not allowed in the library have a policy that outlines appropriate cell phone use in the library. We want to avoid having negative interactions with patrons regarding our policies whenever possible.
Another thing that you can do is to not put restrictions in policies unless they are truly necessary. Really think about why you are banning food or cell phones. What would be the benefit to the patron versus the cost to your personal views? Are you restricting something that people might find necessary? Perhaps parents are on a supervised visit and are required to provide a meal for their child, by banning food in the library we make that impossible for them.
We also want to consider how our policy might create unnecessary barriers to access. Do you really need to restrict meeting room use to library card holders? Do you restrict material checkout by age or other category? What other alternatives are there to some of those policies that don’t create barriers?
We also want to be sure that we never make a policy in response to a specific group. Where I see this most often is with our patrons who are experiencing homelessness. One policy that I encourage everyone to revisit is their policy about sleeping in the library. Do you wake up everyone who naps while reading the newspaper, or just those who you feel are taking advantage of the library space? Really consider those policies and understand who you are making them for and why.
And finally, we need to make sure that we are writing all of our policies with gender neutral and gender sensitive language. One thing I like to remind people is to check your dress code and see if it still outlines appropriate clothing for men and women separately. If so, you may want to consider what part of that is absolutely critical to your organization, if any of it is.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #6: Do you have any examples of success in policy writing that illustrate how this can work? 14:21
Beka Lemons:
One of my favorite policies that I like to share with people to cover a lot of these examples is our bereavement leave policy. Now, I know that’s an odd policy to be proud of, but I made a lot of specific choices to make that policy work well for everyone.
First off, it’s only about six sentences long, and it’s very simple. It outlines the length of time paid that part-time and full-time staff get; states clearly the circumstances when they get the time, which is only for immediate family; addresses what happens if people need more time off and states who they should talk to with any questions.
Then it lists an exhaustive and transparent list of who is considered immediate family. In that list, we have included a lot of nontraditional family arrangements, even going so far as to specifically include domestic partners, stepchildren, foster children and stepparents. The policy was written to include as many iterations of family life as possible. In addition, and to my mind most importantly, we didn’t include any language stipulating that the leave had to be used for a funeral or related event. You get three days off and it isn’t up to me how you use it. This makes the time much more useful to staff and it doesn’t change anything for the organization. It doesn’t make any difference one way or the other, so why would I restrict that time? The policy is clear, concise, inclusive and beneficial to the employee as well as the employer. I think that these are the things that make a good policy.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #7: Is there anything else you’d like to share? 16:06
Beka Lemons:
One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make in policy writing, and honestly in management in general, is to think of things from a negative perspective. We often write policies in response to negative situations, or in order to avoid negative situations, so it’s easy to get bogged down in that negative viewpoint. I think that when we write policy from this perspective it creates an enemy on the other side of that policy, whether it’s the employee that won’t show up on time, or the patron who wants to eat their Cheetos in the rare documents room. We begin to resent that person and harbor a little bit of anger at them for not doing things the way we expect them to. However, if we think about policy from a positive perspective and try to create a good situation for everyone, we have a better environment and better relationships.
Maybe on days when you’re covering a public desk, I really need you to show up on time. But if you shift your whole schedule back an hour on an off-desk day, does that really hurt me? One of the big rules in my library is to not say no if we can help it. We always try to find a way to make things work, even if it is a no—but, you find a positive outcome whenever you can. This will make patrons, staff and you happier in the long run.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #8: Do you have any favorite management or leadership books or resources, and why? 17:30
Beka Lemons:
I am a big fan of Brené Brown’s, Dare to Lead. I have a lot of notes in the margins on that one. Other than that, I really recommend that people read any management or leadership material they can get their hands on. Use the things that make sense to you and let go of the rest. I encourage everyone to keep an open mind, be willing to try new things, or think about things from a different angle. Don’t just read things that you already agree with. That’s how we grow and make ourselves better leaders.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #9: Becca In closing, what do libraries mean to you personally? 18:07
Beka Lemons:
For me, libraries are a portal to what is possible. I grew up in a very small town in the days before cable TV, and what I was able to read at the library showed me so many things that I never knew existed—different cultures and beliefs and thoughts. I think that we still provide that today, even in the age of instant information. We provide a place for people to see and experience things that they might not be exposed to in their daily lives. This is especially true as we increasingly live in a digital echo chamber created by algorithms showing us only the things we like. Libraries give people a view of what is possible in the world and help them to feel like a part of that whole picture, no matter who or what they are.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Thank you so much for those thoughts, and to open this portal of possibility that you’re talking about, we need good policies—policies that are fair and equitable and that help our organizations implement our services to benefit all. You’ve provided excellent steps that any of us can follow to write policy without worry. So I appreciate you being here today. 18:58
Beka Lemons:
Thank you. I’m glad that I can share.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
You’ve been listening to Library Leadership podcast. This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. For more episodes, tune in to Library Leadership Podcast.com, where you can now subscribe to get episodes delivered right into your email inbox. Our producer is Nathan Sinclair Vineyard. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.
We would like to thank the Park City Library for their dedicated support of this show. The opinions expressed on this show are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of Library Leadership podcast or our sponsors.