Policies for Community Managed Libraries

Policy development is the process of setting up procedures that set out how staff and volunteers should behave and what responsibility the organisation has towards the people they employ or work with.

Key policies need to be in place for when staff and volunteers start to work for your organisation and are needed primarily for two reasons:

1. For legal reasons as organisations have many statutory obligations to fulfil and failure to do so increases the possibility of legal action.
2. To ensure clarity and quality by providing staff, volunteers, and directors or board members with guidelines to refer to that direct their behaviour in certain situations.

There is a wide range of policies needed by an organisation. This list is a good place to start but is not exhaustive:

• Sickness and Absence
• Maternity & Parternity Leave
• Annual Leave
• Dependents Leave
• Special Leave
• Equal Opportunity
• Recruitment and Selection
• Disciplinary & Grievance
• Bullying and Harassment
• Telephone, E-mail and Internet use
• Health and Safety
• Conflict of interest
• Communications
• Environmental
• Community involvement
• Volunteer management / volunteering