It can sometimes be confusing to know the difference between guidelines and policies because they seem to be the same. Guidelines are known to be recommendations that people can follow whenever they would like to do something. Guidelines are usually not mandatory.
They are usually more general and some people usually just run through reading the guidelines because most of the things that are written there are things that they are already familiar with. Policies, on the other hand, are different.
Policies are considered to be the rules of the company that people should comply with. If in case some employees are not able to follow the policies, they may need to be disciplined so that they will not repeat the same mistake again.