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What is Policy Management? How can policy software help?

Policy Management Explained:

Policy management is a critical element for ensuring that an organization operates both effectively and ethically within legal and regulatory frameworks. It involves the development, approval, implementation, dissemination, and review of policies designed to guide the behavior and decisions of an organization's members.

  • Development: This initial phase involves identifying the need for a policy, which may arise from new regulatory requirements, changes in the business environment, or identified risks. The development process should be inclusive, often requiring input from various stakeholders across different departments to ensure the policy is comprehensive and applicable.
  • Approval: Once a policy is drafted, it must be reviewed and approved by the necessary authorities within the organization, such as senior management or the board of directors. This step ensures that the policy aligns with the organization's overall strategy and governance structures.
  • Implementation: After approval, the policy needs to be effectively communicated across the organization. This may include training sessions, workshops, and informational materials to ensure everyone understands the policy and its implications for their work.
  • Dissemination: Making sure that the policy is accessible to all employees and relevant stakeholders is crucial. Policies are often stored in a centralized location, such as an intranet or a digital management system, where they can be easily accessed.
  • Review and Updating: Policies should not be static. They need regular review and updating to reflect changes in laws, industry standards, and business operations. This process should also evaluate the effectiveness of existing policies and whether they are achieving their intended objectives.
Effective policy management ensures that an organization not only complies with applicable laws and regulations but also operates in a manner that is consistent with its values and ethical standards. It plays a crucial role in managing risk, enhancing organizational culture, and driving performance towards strategic goals.
 
Understanding the distinctions between policies, processes, and procedures is crucial for any successful organization. Each of these elements plays a vital role in promoting a well-structured, efficient business. Optimizing your policies and procedure processes with policy management software will significantly improve compliance and greatly reduce the effort involved.
 
As your organization expands, policy management software can help manage the increasing number of documents and streamline the workflow, from policy creation to distribution and employee acknowledgment. Software not only aids human resource and compliance teams in enhancing policy workflow efficiency, but also collaborates with organizations to structure their policies, processes, and procedures for sustained growth.
 

What are Policies, Procedures, and Processes?

 
Policy - A company guideline or business rule that directs employees, departments, and the overall organization. Policy management software ensures consistency and compliance with the company's mission, values, and strategic goals, providing a framework for procedures. Typically, upper management creates policies that guide their decision-making. A policy should clarify its purpose, necessity, relevant department, and the responsible parties for execution and enforcement.

Procedure - A detailed, step-by-step instruction for performing a specific task or part of a process. Procedures translate policies into practical applications and are frequently used by employees, who often contribute to their development. A procedure should outline the responsible parties, the steps involved, and the timing and methods of execution.

Process - A cross-departmental workflow that outlines how to produce a product or service while adhering to company policies. It offers a high-level view of how a task should be completed, including the responsible parties and the timing of each task.
White Paper: How to Optimize Policy Management in Large Organizations
Establishing Policies, Processes, and Procedures
Though establishing policies, processes, and procedures may require initial effort, it boosts employee efficiency and confidence. These systems pave the way for scalability and business growth.

As your organization expands, policy management software can help manage the increasing number of documents and streamline the workflow, from policy creation to distribution and employee acknowledgment. The software not only aids human resource and compliance teams in enhancing policy workflow efficiency, but also helps organizations structure their policies, processes, and procedures for sustained growth. 

Rapid business growth can make policy creation and management challenging. Unwritten rules may exist, but they often lead to confusion and misinterpretation, much like the childhood game of "telephone." To ensure compliance and a healthy company culture, employees need consistent, written company policies outlining their roles, responsibilities, and the organization's core principles, ethics, and beliefs. Written policies and procedures also help protect your company from potential legal action.
 
Policy and procedure management is often associated with large corporations, but smaller organizations should not overlook its importance. Both large and small businesses must adhere to certain regulations and standards, making it essential to have a policy and procedure management system in place.
 
For any organization, having a well-structured policy and procedure management system in place projects a well-organized image to potential clients. In a fast-paced business market, a good system helps create a successful and seamless image while ensuring compliance.
Smaller organizations can thrive by designating a group to manage policies and procedures, such as a compliance team. This team can incorporate these tasks into their daily routine, identifying gaps in efficiency and making improvements. The team can be composed of operational management leaders who monitor current processes and procedures.

Policies provide the direction a company needs to comply with laws or company standards, while procedures ensure policies are carried out efficiently. As compliance challenges arise, organizations should adopt a system that confirms all employees have read and understood policies and procedures. This is particularly important as regulations increase and new policies, such as Anti-Harassment and Non-Fraternization Policies, are introduced.
 
Having a robust policy and procedure management system is vital for all companies, regardless of size. Understanding how to create and distribute policies is no longer optional, but a necessity.
 

Ten Essential Policies to Implement 

Policy management software can alleviate the burden of policy creation and management for busy HR and compliance professionals.
Here are ten essential policies to consider implementing:
 
  • Personnel Policies - Address business hours, code of conduct, employment terms, wages, insurance, health benefits, vacation days, sick leave, and retirement.
  • Disciplinary Action Policies - Define violations of company policy and the disciplinary process for issues such as honesty, performance, safety, and misconduct.
  • Safety Policies - Utilize industry best practices and relevant laws to create rules for safe behavior, equipment usage, and hazard reporting.
  • Technology Policies - Establish acceptable usage of the internet, email, and social media for personal purposes at work.
  • Privacy Policies - Promote transparency and trust while protecting employees, the company, and customers.
  • Payment Policies - Set terms for customer and vendor transactions, including payment timeframes and consequences for overdue or missed payments.
  • Confidentiality Policies - Safeguard sensitive information and cover relationships with vendors, customers, and suppliers.
  • Whistleblower Policy - Implement a no-retaliation policy to protect employees and the company.
  • Employee Performance Policies - Define each employee's role, responsibilities, authority, goals, tasks, performance monitoring, and development opportunities.
  • Document and Records Retention Policies - Structure policies for document retention and storage based on legal requirements.

 

When developing policies, consult local, state, and federal regulations and industry best practices to ensure compliance. Avoid definitive, binding statements to prevent liability, and train employees on policies to minimize confusion and misunderstanding.
Policy management software is a valuable tool for corporate compliance managers, streamlining policy creation and management processes to help you maintain a compliant and organized business.
Three Vital Responsibilities
As a manager in any organization, regardless of size or industry, you have three vital responsibilities concerning policies and procedures: access, education, and enforcement.

Access:
  • Who trains new employees on accessing company and department-specific policies and procedures?
  • Are employees aware of where policies are stored and how they're organized
  • Can employees easily access policies, or must they search through shared drives, spreadsheets, emails, handbooks, and physical folders?
  • Do employees know how to find information when they have policy or procedure questions?
Education:
  • Who trains new employees on company policies and procedures?
  • How do employees learn about new or updated policies and procedures?
  • Do employees understand the reasons behind policy creation and the importance of compliance?
  • What happens when an employee has a question about a company policy, such as sick days, overtime, confidentiality, or a job-related task?
Enforcement:
  • Who is responsible for updating and refining your department's policies and procedures?
  • Do you participate in creating, reviewing, or updating your department's policies?
  • How do you demonstrate compliance with company policies and guide your employees?
  • How do you enforce company policies in hiring, firing, promotions, or performance reviews?
  • How do employees hold each other accountable?
As a manager, you play a key role in providing policy access, education, and enforcement, effectively acting as a policy manager. It's crucial to evaluate your policy management system if you struggle to answer these questions or find it challenging to access, learn, or enforce policies and procedures.
 
Engaging Employees
Organizations like yours understand the importance of attracting and retaining top talent, which is why employee engagement has become increasingly significant. Engaged employees bring energy and personal investment to their work, feeling motivated and focused on their tasks. This leads them to take ownership of their jobs and become dedicated to their roles and the company. Employee engagement and retention start from day one, as you introduce them to the company culture through policies and procedures.

A company's policies offer a sense of the organization's values, ethics, and personality. Sound policies provide employees with the confidence and security to work to their full potential. By involving employees in policy creation, review, and renewal, you give them a stake in the company's growth and direction, showing their opinions matter and encouraging participation—thus increasing employee engagement.
 
How can you include your employees in the policy management process more easily?
 
  • Involve employees in policy creation: Empower them to contribute suggestions and feedback based on their front-line experiences. This leads to more effective and applicable policies.
  • Request employee feedback for policy renewal or updates: This increases the likelihood of employees using and ensuring the policies are useful.
  • Make policies easily accessible: Organize policies logically and make them easy to find, on a searchable and accessible system.
  • Keep policies short and simple: Concise, easy-to-read policies encourage employees to reference them more frequently, leading to better adherence to guidelines.
  • Distribute new and updated policies efficiently: Timely sharing of policies prevents misunderstandings and demonstrates the company's commitment to effective policy management and compliance.
  • Test employees' understanding of policies: Assessing employee knowledge of policies helps ensure compliance and offers opportunities for questions or feedback.
While involving more employees in the policy management process may initially seem slower, automating your policy management with a system like ConvergePoint's Policy Management Software streamlines the process while encouraging employee engagement and giving them greater access to company policies.
 
Policy creation features in the software allow you to create automated workflows, ensuring appropriate employees are prompted to create, review, and approve policies.
 
Policies are published and stored in a central repository, making them easily accessible. The software also automates distribution and employee acknowledgment of policies, ensuring employees receive notifications when a new policy is ready for review and are tested to confirm they've read and understood it.
 
Policy Drafting, Review, and Approval

Use a policy software solution for creating and managing policies and procedures. Key features should include:
  • Centralized policy management: Keep all documents in one system, accessible to relevant stakeholders based on their roles and functions. Documents can be securely stored on an internal document management platform like Microsoft 365 SharePoint.
  • Standardized templates: Utilize standardized templates for policies and procedures, and easily find the status of any document within the lifecycle.
  • Policy Management - Review and Approval: Streamline the policy review and approval process with automated reminders, compliance notifications, and chain of command tracking.
  • Version Control: Track different versions of each policy, ensuring no work is lost and everyone works on the latest copy. Monitor changes and maintain the correct version.
  • Policy Discussions: Collaboratively develop policies and procedures using discussion boards for real-time communication between team members from different departments.
  • Real-Time Dashboards: Create custom views to quickly get an overview of policy and procedure statuses. Monitor each stage of the policy workflow and easily make changes and updates.
  • Advanced Search & Reports: Quickly find policies using advanced search, run ad hoc reports for insights into policy features, stages, and owners, and track the progress of new policies through various stages in the workflow.
  • Roles and User-Based Permissions: Manage user access permissions on a role-based system, specify who can view, edit, or delete policies, and ensure data security and compliance with user access controls.
  • Compliance Audit Trails: Automatically log every change and action on policies for improved compliance. View audit trails to track who edited a document and when, ensure regulatory compliance with real-time updates on policy changes, and monitor user access permissions for secure, compliant data management.

    A policy management solution, like ConvergePoint Policy Management Software,  enables businesses to efficiently create, manage, and track policies and procedures within a centralized platform. With features such as standardized templates, version control, real-time dashboards, and compliance audit trails, the software ensures a streamlined and compliant policy management process.
 

Central Policy Library 

 Businesses are constantly adapting to meet the demands of the market. While mergers, acquisitions, and subsidiaries are frequent topics in business conversations, the compliance team responsible for maintaining corporate cohesion is often overlooked. These teams create policies and procedures to address operational and regulatory requirements, ensuring the organization runs smoothly.
 
However, compliance teams face a significant challenge—policies and procedures that are scattered throughout the organization. Policies are typically created for two audiences: the entire organization or specific subsets of the business. While a central compliance team usually handles organization-wide policies, subset policies are often created, distributed, and renewed by department leaders who are directly involved in the policy environment. Decentralized policies and procedures can create both regulatory and cohesion concerns. This structure leads to a decentralization of policies and procedures, with departments having their own shared drives or operating guides containing policies specific to them. While this approach seems logical, it creates a significant challenge for the compliance team aiming for corporate cohesion. It is common for multiple copies of the same policy to be distributed to different departments, making it difficult for the compliance team to track all shared drives and ensure updates are made consistently. Consequently, some employees may reference outdated policies, which can lead to regulatory and compliance issues, particularly when managing thousands of policies and procedures. Moreover, when different departments create their policies, there can be inconsistencies in information, formatting styles, and even conflicting instructions in similar policies. This can result in a regulatory nightmare and unclear messaging for employees.
 
How can you centralize policies and procedures while only providing user-specific content? Before designing any system or business process, professionals must first consider the requirements.
 
Here are some suggested considerations:
 
  • Single Centralized Document Storage System
  • Document Permissions Specific to the User or Department
  • Centralized Area for Updated/Uniform Templates and Tools
  • Automatic Publishing and Retirement

Considering these needs, ConvergePoint determined that Microsoft 365 SharePoint, a platform already used by many enterprises, could be utilized for centralizing policy management. By extending the platform and adding features, a centralized area for document distribution is created, using SharePoint permissions to enable user-specific views.

The software solution also automates the entire lifecycle of policy management, increasing efficiency and ensuring compliance with policies and procedures. For more information, read "5 steps to ensure compliance with policies and procedures through automation."

The system uses workflows to automatically distribute information to employees while removing expired policies from the central area. This ensures a single, centralized area for managing policies and procedures, reducing the likelihood of multiple copies of the same policy. Employees will always have access to the most current policy version, and the compliance team will only need to manage one central area.

  • Automated policy distribution: Automatically publish and deliver policies, minimizing manual effort and ensuring timely updates.
  • Expiration notifications and alerts: Stay up-to-date on policy renewals with notifications and alerts, simplifying compliance management.
  • Role-based access and restricted views: Safeguard confidential information by providing access only to authorized personnel, based on their roles and responsibilities.
  • Centralized policy repository: Store all policies and procedures in one central repository on Microsoft SharePoint, enabling easy access and management.
  • Advanced search functionality: Quickly and easily find relevant information with the advanced search feature.
  • Streamlined policy management processes: Distribute documents efficiently using a structured policy management system, ensuring smooth workflows.
  • Automated enforcement of compliance standards: Strengthen the policy lifecycle by automating compliance enforcement, minimizing the risk of non-compliance.
  • Quick publishing and updating: Rapidly publish updates, changes, or new documents without interrupting workflow, ensuring that policies remain current.
  • Organized document tracking: Monitor which documents are being read by employees, enhancing the organization and control over policy dissemination.
  • Policy certifications and customizable notifications: Set up policy certifications for employees and receive customizable notification alerts when a document has been read and acknowledged, promoting employee engagement and compliance.

Implementing best practices is made easier with features such as:

  • Centralized document repository: Link documents and sites to the latest version of policies stored in one central location, simplifying access and management.
  • Regulatory compliance: Meet regulatory standards by storing all versions and records in one place, ensuring a comprehensive audit trail.
  • Automated expiration notifications: Stay on top of renewal cycles with automated notifications, reducing the risk of outdated policies.
  • Policy manager alerts: Notify policy managers when a policy needs to be updated, reviewed, renewed, or retired, ensuring timely action and maintaining compliance.

    In summary, automated policy management offers a comprehensive solution for streamlining and organizing policy management processes. By automating key aspects such as policy distribution, compliance enforcement, and document tracking, businesses can efficiently manage their policies, ensure compliance, and maintain organized workflows.

Policy Acknowledgement

Ensure compliance with a policy attestation feature by implementing a comprehensive policy management system that streamlines communication, acknowledgment, and training. 
Key aspects should include in  
  • Policy acknowledgment: Notify employees of new policies and procedures and ensure they have read and understood them.
  • Quiz module: Test employees' understanding of the documents with customized quizzes.
  • Real-time dashboards: Monitor individual and aggregate employee progress to keep track of policy training.
  • Targeted audience: Communicate policy changes swiftly within the organization, request individual or department acknowledgments, and store records centrally for easy access and compliance.
  • Policy change notifications: Notify employees of new policies, request acknowledgment, and escalate if no response is received within a predetermined timeframe.
  • Policy and procedure quizzes: Create custom quizzes to ensure employees understand company policies, monitor compliance, and automatically issue certificates upon successful completion.
  • Reporting and dashboards: Generate detailed reports on policy acknowledgments, visualize data with interactive graphs and charts, and quickly detect potential non-compliance issues.
  • Schedule recurring certifications: Set up recurring requests for policy sign-offs, send automatic notifications, configure reminders, and monitor compliance levels.
  • Employee attestation dashboards: Quickly identify who has or has not acknowledged policies in real-time, generate customizable reports, and access data securely.
  • Customize and configure: Tailor the policy workflow, capture metadata, set custom acknowledgments, control access rights, and automate the policy management process with customized triggers and alerts.
By employing these features, companies can effectively manage their policies and ensure that employees are up-to-date on their policy training. This comprehensive approach to policy management helps maintain compliance, streamline workflow, and improve overall corporate culture.
 

ConvergePoint Policy Management Software

The ConvergePoint Policy Management Software stands as a comprehensive enterprise solution for policy and procedure lifecycle management, fully integrated into Microsoft Office 365 SharePoint. This robust software is designed with best practices for document creation, review, redlining, and approvals, and it comes equipped with a roles-based document repository, attestations, renewals, advanced search functions, reporting features, and real-time dashboards, among other features.

This platform can be tailored to your organization's specific needs, allowing you to gather metadata relevant to your business and leverage it for reporting.

With ConvergePoint, you're always prepared for any kind of audit, be it internal or external. This is thanks to comprehensive features like extensive document versioning, permission control, collaboration tools, and detailed audit trails, all built into the software. Add-Ins for Microsoft Teams and Word are also included for extra convenience.

Our solution ensures automatic conversion and publication of finished documents in PDF format, and is compatible with a wide range of file formats to accommodate your evolving needs. It guarantees your employees will always have access to the most recent version of a policy or procedure, all from a centralized repository. Furthermore, its search function allows for quick and efficient location of documents and metadata. Access control, based on permissions, lets you provide employees with documents that are pertinent to their roles.

The platform includes an optional certification/attestation feature for employees to confirm their understanding of policies and procedures, which also gives managers the ability to confirm compliance among team members.

Available as an app in the Microsoft App Store, the ConvergePoint solution can be installed on your existing Microsoft  SharePoint platform in under ten minutes. Future updates and software upgrades are just a click away and can be installed in just a few minutes.

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