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Earlier this year, I signed on to a volunteer working group of young public servants to participate in HR policy renewal in Ottawa. We’re participating in consultation with HR to simplify HR policies (ultimately the goal is to simplify procedure, saving time and money).

I work in Toronto (Ontario Region) so there’s challenges involved in participating with a group based out of Ottawa. Thankfully we have technology and today I was able to use Skype to participate in a conference call, on a day I had booked off from work.

Which sort of brings me to part of my point. Things that are well designed should be simple to use. Well designed technology (Skype and a MacBook) made it simple and exciting to take part in this discussion.

Lets apply this to something else, like policy.

Everyone’s been in roped off queues that zig-zag in front of a service counter, forcing you to walk back and forth just to reach the front of an empty line, right? That’s what policy can feel like when it’s created as a protectionist measure. People get frustrated and they try to find shortcuts and loopholes. Or, people just let things slide, and nothing gets done because the system is too complex for them to grasp effectively. When this happens, the policy becomes defunct anyways. Much like the roped line that you just completely bypassed.

But how can we take something like HR Policy, and make it as easy and effective for the user as my MacBook and Skype are for me? That’s what we’re attempting to tackle with our working group. The really hard part, is not only does it need to be simple, but it also needs to be able to do everything that’s required of it.

The meeting today was spent beginning to define clear goals and objectives of the group. We’re young employees without the benefit of decades of experience with the subject, so this will probably be the most laborious part of the consultation process. That said, I think once we define the problem and set out real objectives, we’ll be able to propose some great solutions.

As a communicator, I’m excited to be part of a team working to simplify things. Simple is how we ensure more people will pay attention, comprehend, and act using the system and tools to do their job more effectively, and more efficiently.

Much like using my MacBook at home in my kitchen, on my day off, to work with colleagues hundreds of kilometres away. If technology hadn’t made it so simple to do, I probably would not have done it.

I’ll end this post with a video of something else that’s a brilliantly conceived, simple and fun solution to a problem.