• All employees must know their role and responsibility for any given policy in order for it to govern the company effectively.

For policies and procedures to be effective, roles and responsibilities must be assigned. A safety program without assigned accountability leads to inefficiencies and noncompliance. In short, every employee — from the drivers to the managers — must know what their roles and responsibilities are within the safety program. Here are a few examples:

• Managers and supervisors need to be held responsible for overseeing the development of policies and procedures.
• An employee needs to be assigned the responsibility of making sure that the policies are kept current and employees are trained on their content.
• An employee needs to be responsible for verifying that the policies are being followed.

A company should not create a “paper tiger” policy or procedure that no employee pays attention to after it’s written. It won’t take a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration investigator long to figure out if a carrier’s policies and procedures hold people accountable for their assigned roles and responsibilities.