A policy sets out the strategic direction of the organization as decided by senior management. A policy will lay out a destination, but won’t give any direction on how this is to be executed. For example a policy would contain a statement such as: ‘Time and attendance with be tracked for all staff and contractors in a clear and consistent way’, but wouldn’t give any indication as to how that should be done.

‘A process is a set of inter-related activities that turn inputs into outputs.

A procedure or work instruction should detail the exact steps an individual would need to go through to complete any activity detailed in a process. Continuing on the time and attendance theme, a procedure may have the instruction: ‘The time and attendance spreadsheet can be found in the HR folder of the network drive. Populate the employee number and hours worked in columns C and D’.