Good morning everyone!
I wanted to take a moment to give a shoutout to Lewis Eisen for his Policy Writing Workshop that I was able to participate in last month. We have a three day workshop with a great group of individuals learning all about writing policies for the modern workplace. Lewis has a wealth of information on writing policy and posed very thought provoking questions that made me think about the state of policy in our current environment versus what he proposes it can look like.
Just a Taste:
Must/May/Should- All of these terms (and their synonyms) can be avoided and help clean up the language of a policy. When you think of these terms, their definitions are ambiguous at best. I looked across policy at my organization and found instances in the same policy of these terms being used in different ways:
May- it is possible
May- it is allowed
May- might
I challenge you to look at your own documentation and see what you find.
Anyone can benefit from Lewis' knowledge in policy writing and he made the workshop fun and thought provoking. I am not sure when he is hosting the next one but @Lewis Eisen can tell you. If you have the chance- see what he has to say. I am already working to incorporate the things I learned into the policies and documentation at my organization.
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Sarah Lambert-Sheffield, CIP
Lead Document and Records Management Specialist
Fluor Federal Petroleum Operations
DOE- Strategic Petroleum Reserve
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