Policy vs Process vs Procedure: What's the Difference? (+ Examples)

You know you need written policies, processes, and procedures for your business, but how are the 3 Ps different? When do you use each of them?

I’ve been there. I asked the same question when I started working for ScreenSteps, a knowledge" target="_blank">https://www.screensteps.com/knowledge-base-software-guide">knowledge base software company that helps companies create, store, and share their policies, processes, and procedures.

What I learned, is that the 3 Ps tend to get used interchangeably in business — but each P represents a different aspect of sharing company information. They are all important and play a specific role in your company.

To provide some clarity on the 3 Ps, I’ll quickly explain the roles of policies, processes, and procedures in your business. Plus, I provide an example of how each works. Then I explain why it helps to document all three for your company.

What is the difference between a policy, process, and procedure?

While policies, processes, and procedures are all used in companies to answer specific questions, their role in answering questions are slightly different.

These three resources are also known as learning assets that help instruct your employees in classroom training or while in the workflow.

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Policy

Policies are the rules and regulations of your company. These guidelines are used to ensure consistency and compliance throughout your organization.

It is a resource that tells employees the what, who, why, or when behind your business’s operations. Policies tell the employee what’s allowed and what’s not allowed as well as when it might be allowed. More specifically, a policy tells employees:

• What the policy is and its classification
• Who is responsible for completing and enforcing a policy
• Why a policy is required
• When a policy needs to be used and enforced

Instead of going into details, policies tend to be broad and general. This is because they are a core part of a company’s operations. Because of the broad nature of policies, they tend to change infrequently.

Examples of a policy

For banks, they have policies surrounding all of their transactions. If someone comes into a bank looking to refinance a loan, then the bank would have a policy that allows people to refinance on a loan if X conditions are met.

Another example is in retail. Most retail stores have a return policy that requires customers to return unwanted items within X amount of days. Those policies include the company’s stance on what to do if the item is returned after that time or if the item has been used.

In both of these examples, the policies cover the stance and conditions that are allowed.