What is internal documentation?
Internal documentation is a structured collection of your company’s policies, procedures, processes, guidelines, and best practices, accumulated knowledge and expertise, training materials and so on created by the organization for its needs that people in the organization can use as a reference to get their work done.
Basic types of internal company documentation
Policies, procedures and process documentation
Policies and procedures such as.
- Employee handbook
- Onboarding procedure
- Offboarding procedure
- Employee policies
- Security policies
- Compliance information
- QA testing policies
Training and employee development documentation
Training and employee documentation provides any content important for the development of employees such as
- Training materials
- Employee development plan
- Training checklists
- Performance reviews
Project documentation
Project documentation relates to all the internal documents created over the course of a project such as
- Business case or project idea
- Project plan, project risk analysis
- Project schedule or timeline
- Project meeting minutes
- Project status report or tracking
- Project closure document or project summary, lessons learned
Operational and team collaboration documentation
Operational documentation essential for day-to-day operations such as:
- Operational plans
- Team schedules
- Status reports
- Team meeting minutes
- Department meeting minutes
Technical documentation, product or service knowledge
Technical documentation is any document related to your product or service.
- Source code
- Manuals
- User documentation, Admin documentation
- Code, style guides
- Product requirements
- Architecture
- FAQs
- Maintenance documentation
- Product datasheet
Sales documentation
- Proposals
- Business cases
- Sales meeting minutes
- Sales activity records
What forms can internal company documentation take?
Internal company documentation is not limited to just written text and documents and can come in many different forms.
- written internal documents
- wikipages
- video tutorials
- training content
- diagrams
- images, screenshots, videos, screen recordings
What are the basic types of corporate regulations and governing documents?
Company policies follow a specific structure and naming convention to distinguish documents based on their purpose and use. A work order is a particular type of internal regulation. It outlines rules based on labor laws and other legal requirements tailored to the employer's specific conditions.
- Company Policy is a document that states a company’s official stance or commitment to act in a certain way. These are broader documents. Examples include Security Policy, Quality Policy, and similar policies.
- Company Procedures, Work Procedures, or guidelines provide detailed, step-by-step instructions that define processes and guide daily operations.
- Manuals are detailed guides typically focused on a specific process or task. They list the exact steps employees should follow to complete a job correctly.
- Company Standards are documents that set clear requirements for behaviors, products, or services, describing the desired quality or performance level.