eBusiness Weekly
Note from ZNCC
The Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce is hosting the 10th Edition of the Women in Enterprise Conference and Awards on September 29, 2023.
The day encompasses insightful deliberations during the day and an awards ceremony in the evening.
One of the topics under discussion is on: Strengthening Policy and Institutional Frameworks, Funding and Networks to Advance Women’s Entrepreneurship.
These conversations will provide a clearer understanding of the landscape of women’s entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe, identify challenges and opportunities, examine policy frameworks and define policy actions that would position African women, leaders in global women entrepreneurship to play a transformative role in the Zimbabwean economy.
With increasing regulatory oversight and legal obligations, geographic expansion of business operations and the spike in employee lawsuits, it comes as no surprise that companies are finding it practically difficult to manage policy and institutional frameworks.
Since policies and institutions are a dynamic body of shared knowledge that can strengthen, support and protect a company’s success, the need of the hour is adopting a more streamlined and standardised approach to policy management and its implementation.
Creating policies and institutions that resonate with its target audience is a key responsibility for an organisation.
Difficulties usually arise in holding an employee accountable for a policy or institution they have never seen or cannot understand.
To achieve this, it is crucial to follow a well-defined step-by-step process at every stage of the policy management life-cycle.
An organisation can protect its people and reputation only by ensuring a formal policy management process is in place to create, distribute and update necessary policies and procedures.
Organisational policies are a set of guidelines, principles and rules established by an organisation to govern its operations and guide the behaviour of its employees.
These policies provide a road map of day-to-day operations and help to understand the organisation’s views and values on specific issues.
They allow management to guide operations without constant intervention and aim to help businesses in many ways.
Policies demonstrate that the business organisation is being operated in a good and efficient manner, raising stability and ensuring consistency in decision-making and operational procedures.
Institutions involve established laws or practices that are followed within the organisation.
Organisational policies are general statements that provide guidance on how to perform a task step-by-step. Some policies have multiple guidelines, which are recommendations on how the policy can be implemented.
Policies are generally adopted by an organisation to establish boundaries, guidelines, and best practices for acceptable behaviour in the organisation’s business.
The policy cycle is used to analyse and develop a policy item evaluation, implementation and decision-making.
Procedures are step-by-step guidelines to complete a task. They provide a detailed explanation of how to perform a specific task. For example, if anyone tries to enter the organisation, the security guard will check and collect all details.
Employees must have an identity card and show it to the security guard for verification. Employees inside the company must use the punching machine and identity card.
The security card must be verified by the employee’s identity card photo and ID number of the employee entering the company.
Any person who tries to defraud the security guard and come inside the company should immediately report it to the police or top officials of the company.
Similarly, standards are mandatory actions or sets of rules that give formal policies support and direction. They specify which technologies must be used for a specific task.
For example, accounting standards are a set of principles, procedures, and guidelines that define the basis of financial accounting policies and practices.
They are used to systematise bookkeeping and other accounting functions across firms and over time.
To add on, accounting policies are the specific principles, bases, conventions, rules and practices applied by an entity in preparing and presenting financial statements.
They are different from accounting principles, as principles are the overarching accounting rules, whereas policies are the way a company follows the rules.
The way an organisation presents financial statements has repercussions when approaching financial institutions and has implications on the chances of getting finance for working capital and new projects.
IAS 8 Accounting Policies, Changes in Accounting Estimates and Errors is applied in selecting and applying accounting policies, accounting for changes in estimates, and reflecting corrections of prior period errors.
The standard requires compliance with any specific IFRS applying to a transaction, event, or condition, and provides guidance on developing accounting policies for other items that result in relevant and reliable information.
Changes in accounting policies and corrections of errors are generally retrospectively accounted for, whereas changes in accounting estimates are generally accounted for on a prospective basis.
Since employees must follow policies, it is highly recommended that they be allowed to give their feedback. This can be made possible by providing options to post questions and suggestions for every policy.
Furthermore, encouraging feedback shows that employees are reading and understanding policies.
A culture that does not readily accept employee comments will most likely produce a substandard set of policies that probably would not be used.
It is also important that an organisation has a centralised repository for all its policies so employees have direct access to all organisational policies. If the policies are difficult to access or locate, employees will be less likely to read them.
The possibilities for growing a network exist far beyond the people that are already known and in the current cycle.
Many people meet new contacts through professional groups, which may come together for social hours, panels, webinars, or other events aimed at career development.
The Women in Enterprise Conference and other events such as the ZNCC Annual Congress and the Business Review Conference present networking opportunities where there are high chances of meeting the next supplier or the new customer.
It is of paramount importance to put much energy into keeping the existing network and clientele, but also to broadening it.
In conclusion, this topic looks at the women-owned business itself in terms of the organizational policies and strategic choices that are critical in advancing reach, networks, and the firm’s ability to get funding on the financial market.
Poor policy and institutional frameworks threaten the firm’s prospects of obtaining finance and maintaining relationships with financiers, customers, and suppliers.
This article was prepared by the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce for Business Weekly
