Organizations attempt to formalize their culture through distinct policies. These policies specify what employees are expected to do and how non-compliance is handled. A compilation of all corporate policies are typically distributed as an employee handbook and/or placed on an intranet.
However, keeping the policies updated and ensuring everyone who needs to know what is described by a policy and its changes grows constantly in complexities, behavior, and implementation with respect to the number of individuals and their locations.
It is also challenging to ensure that employees must know their mission and agree to follow policies, be trained to execute them and be informed when policies change. Noncompliance may necessitate the involvement of management, human resources (HR), legal counsel, and auditors. Therefore, proper compliance with policies, their review, and on-time audit is a compelling necessity. This article outlines policy management insights to reach these goals.
What is Policy Review?
"A policy is a set of basic rules explaining an organization's strategy or performing a process or a procedure, dealing with an operation or regulatory requirement(s). Policies communicate the organization's vision and values and its day-to-day activities.
"A policy review is a method describing a detailed action plan for implementing a policy.
Policies can help your workplace run more smoothly, provided they are enforced efficiently. The guidelines' enforcement ensures that your organization's operational activities and decision-making processes are uniform and consistent throughout business growth.
Failing this, organizations may not realize their full potential. Creating and implementing policies represent the workplace’s values and makes it a better environment for all employees.
Why is it Important?
Employees can have a better understanding of their roles and duties within predefined limits when policies are well-explained. It allows the accountable authority to direct the business operations without constant management intervention. Continual intervention increases operational costs and reduces profitability. Adopting effective policies can expand business and market share to new heights.
With policies, both individual and team responsibilities are documented, no trial-and-error or micro-management is required. Employees get guidance on how to perform their jobs after reviewing company policies.
The absence of written policies results in unnecessary time and efforts spent attempting to reach specific actions. With strict guidelines, employees are expected to follow processes while managers only need to enforce the policies.
63% of organizations stated that their policy management helps minimize legal expenses and the resolution time of regulatory concerns and fines.
Thus, organizations must develop policies and procedures to reflect their vision, values, and culture as well as their employees' requirements. Enforcing these policies is very important to achieve business objectives and to stay ahead of the curve.
An Effective Policy Review Management Focuses on:
- Whether the policy guidelines define requirements such as readability and understandability, the usage of version control, and the need (or not) for individuals to acknowledge each policy.
- The extent of the policy portfolio against anticipated risk affecting the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of sensitive information as well as the identification of other problems that might require policy consideration.
- The policy's current state such as when it was last reviewed and a need to update it.
- Dissemination including on paper required acknowledgment required, on paper without acknowledgment, self-service intranet site, etc.
- Compliance monitoring mechanisms.
Policy Review Management Challenges
Corporate policy ranges from HR guidelines, set the norms, and outline operations, to shape an organization's culture. Good policy management is critical to ensure an organization operates effectively and profitably.
69% of CEOs are unsure that their current policies will be adequate to satisfy future needs. With continually changing regulations, increasing vendor relationships, and customer-facing documentation, a company's policy system has become complex and challenging. To meet these challenges the following must be addressed:
- Developing and Updating Documents - Many businesses develop and update documents using word processors or spreadsheets. Policies may be dispersed over several computers and not accessible from a single centralized site.
Employees lack access to the most updated policies which increases the risk of redundancy, inaccuracy, and policy violations. Furthermore, tracking down documents to edit becomes a time-consuming chore. - Providing Easy Access to Current Policies - Many employees end up without reading organizational policies if distributed by email or printed materials. Tracking and Auditing attestation outcomes become nearly difficult using these methods.
To promote policy awareness and compliance, employees demand ways to access, read, and attest to policies applicable to them hassle-free. - Training Employees About Policies - Employees must be aware of and comprehend policies in order to execute them properly. Manual policy management techniques make it difficult to track attestations and provide no way to check if staff members have read and comprehended the policies relevant to their department or job function.
A Robust Policy Review Management Solution - BCube Analytics
A robust policy review can enable effective operational risk management. Organizations must conduct a high-level review regularly. This could be an assessment by governance, risk management, internal audit personnel, or an external consultant. It reveals areas for improvement and supports management commitment with a more integrated approach.
Expand your business and put effective policies in place to improve your employees' capacity to provide consistent, high-quality services without raising the burden of employee management responsibilities.
Become acquainted with well-conducted policy reviews performed by BCube Analytics. We are a team of experts focused on AI-driven real-time audit, compliance, and regulatory services regarding policies with multiple users, tricky updates, and multiple levels of approval.