Any corporate employee is familiar enough with the routine song-and-dance that occurs upon accepting a job: HR presents them with a packet of documents to read through, each requiring a signature affirming acceptance of the terms and conditions included within. These documents can be a real slog, right? It’s easy to look at a stack of business guidelines and think of them as a hassle, instead of the culmination of that business’s policy and procedure management processes.
In a well-run organization, the persons in charge of devising that employee handbook and those other policy and procedure documents put a lot of time and energy into their assembly, and for good reason! There are a number of important legal and practical considerations these documents must cover.
Policy and procedure management, or the structured system within a company for creating and maintaining, and communicating organizational rules, exists to make sure these considerations never fall to the wayside. In recent years, the business community has turned in growing numbers to policy and procedure management software to help them handle the creation and distribution of this vastly important documentation. Should your company be next?
In this article, we’ll discuss policies and procedures themselves and their significance, as well as the major components of effective policy and procedure management. Finally we’ll take a closer look at policy and procedure management software, and the value it can bring to your business. Let’s get started!
Purpose of Policies and Procedures
To understand the purpose and significance of policy and procedure management, a good place to start is with these two concepts, and the ground they cover in the landscape of any business.
For one thing, policies and procedures are not interchangeable! A policy is defined as a broad guideline for action, while a procedure consists of a detailed set of instructions for carrying out a specific action. Policies are rules that reflect organizational values. Procedures, in turn, provide the steps for implementing them.
For example, company policy might require that workers submit invoices for reimbursement for work-related expenses. Company procedures then dictate how employees provide this information, what information to include, to whom it should be sent, and the deadline for submission.
What these two cornerstones of policy and procedure management do have in common is that they work together to benefit everyone, business and employee alike. Policies and procedures govern countless elements of operations, from how the hiring process works, to what qualifies as a fireable offense, and so on, forever.
Thorough and accessible policies and procedures encourage employee understanding and reduce ambiguity, while encouraging consistency across different roles and departments. An organization’s commitment to a strong policy framework also helps shape employee behavior by encouraging alignment with company goals.
Why Policy and Procedure Management Matters
Because policies and procedures are so crucial to the operations of an organization, proper policy and procedure management is even more vital. Every step of the policy and procedure management process, from genesis to enforcement, informs an organization’s priorities, its goals, and its culture.
A business that fails to create proper policies and procedures and adequately distribute them to employees is bound to suffer. Believe it or not, it’s much harder for employees to align with company values or even handle various day-to-day functions if they don’t know how.
Competent policy and procedure management also functions to keep a company and its workers compliant with company rules, as well as legal ones. Many business owners don’t fully appreciate that courts often treat employee handbooks and related documentation as legally binding agreements. Serious legal consequences could result if the company cannot prove that a particular employee received them, or if an important policy update wasn’t properly distributed to the workforce. If a fired employee files a wrongful termination suit, these documents will likely receive close scrutiny at the hearing.
A business must also ensure employees act in accordance with all applicable government regulations. There simply isn’t sufficient space here to list the “alphabet soup” of existing regulatory agencies, but it is certain that your company is under the jurisdiction of one or more of them. A sound policy and procedure management system will keep your personnel from inadvertently flouting the law.
Core Components of Effective Policy and Procedure Management
The best, most thorough approach to effective policy and procedure management should start with a strong policy framework. A policy framework essentially guides the development of an organization’s procedures and policies, ensuring that the resulting documents are both consistent and user-friendly for employees.
Your organization’s policy and procedure management framework can be separated into three sections: Policy hierarchy, the policy development process, and policy roles and responsibilities.
Hierarchy
A policy hierarchy establishes the different policies and procedures that govern company activity, ranked by precedence. Every business is structured at least a little bit differently, with unique internal and external forces that influence how that particular business will organize its policy and procedure management framework.
That being said, for most organizations, the top of the policy hierarchy will consist of any laws and regulations that govern that organization’s industry and business. These will supersede any other rules employees are subject to.
Below laws and regulations, you’ll find a company’s code of conduct (in some companies, this document may also be referred to as a declaration, a constitution, a creed, bylaws or a charter). This set of rules defines a company’s culture norms and how employees should act on a daily basis, and any new policies or procedures should align with it.
Next comes policies! These cover more high-level matters such as setting controls that support performance outcomes, company-wide policies that affect everyone such as an employee travel policy, or more specific policies that apply to a specific area, such as an HR policy.
Below policies are procedures that explain practically how policies will be applied. At the base of your policy hierarchy, you’ll find other supporting documentation, such as forms, manuals, and handbooks.
Policy Development and Lifecycle
The policy lifecycle refers to the point in your policy management framework where policies are conceived and created.
Policy development is a multi-step process, but consists of four distinct stages:
- Agenda setting. A need for a new policy is identified, and a team with defined roles is assigned to draft it. That team identifies objectives for the new policy, and analyzes potential problems and risks. This stage should include research, data collection, and consultation of subject matter experts, as well as relevant company stakeholders.
- Creation. The policy is drafted. For best possible employee comprehension, policies and procedures should be written in clear, concise language. The policy draft should be thoroughly reviewed and revised by a team consisting of employees, subject experts, and other relevant individuals. After writing, reviewing, and revision has been completed to the team’s satisfaction, the policy is approved.
- Implementation. The policy is distributed to the necessary individuals and departments, who are expected to acknowledge that they have received and understood the policy. Employees may also receive training on the policy to guarantee full comprehension.
- Maintenance. In this final stage, after implementation, the new policy should be monitored to ensure that it’s having its intended impact. Regular periods of review should occur, with updates added to the policy as needed based on employee feedback and legal or regulatory changes.
Roles and Responsibilities
Productive policy and procedure management is often a collaborative process, in which everyone involved should know the role they occupy, and what is expected of that role. The goal of this stage is to ensure that everyone brought into the process is aware of their duties, and how they will impact policy management.
When drafting a new policy, for example, someone should be assigned as the policy owner, or a clear authority on the formulation of the operant document. That policy owner should manage the policy writers, reviewers, and anyone else involved in the process. The policy owner may not be the same person every time, but your policy management framework should still dictate who these individuals are.
Other roles that should be assigned and defined by your organization’s policy and procedure management framework may include a policy writer, a system editor, members of a policy committee consisting of reviews and other stakeholders to provide feedback, and an authority responsible for giving final approval.
Benefits of Policy and Procedure Management Software
The reality of a continuously evolving business landscape is that these days, there’s potential technological solutions for just about everything. If your business hasn’t yet considered software options for optimizing policy and procedure management, now might be the time!
Policy and procedure management software is exactly what it sounds like: Software that provides companies with an easy-to-use, centralized, web-based method for creating, storing, and distributing important documents. Policy and procedure management software plays a huge role in streamlining policy creation, updates, and distribution, while facilitating collaboration and communication.
Technological solutions for policy and procedure management also remove the middleman of slow, inefficient manual workflows. Instead, automated systems manage the collection and distribution of documents with minimal human involvement, saving HR employees time they might otherwise spend gathering and handing out material. Through long-term usage, that reduced administrative effort combined with increased efficiency will translate to cost savings, as well.
Features of an Effective Policy and Procedure Management System
It’s easy enough to tout the benefits of software for policy and procedure management, but with so many different business software solutions on the market, you can afford to be a little picky. Features to look out for in your policy and procedure management software should include:
- Central repository and standard format: Keeping policy and procedure content stored in on online location guarantees searchability, accessibility, and productivity.
- Version control and audit trails: It should be easy and intuitive to track changes and updates to documents, providing a thorough, comprehensive record to ensure compliance and accountability.
- Virtually Unlimited Storage: Though not infinite, a document management system permits the long-term storage of many thousands of documents—much more space than even most large corporations would ever use.
- Automated distribution and acknowledgement tracking: Automatically distribute policies and procedures to relevant employees, while digitally tracking and recording those employees’ responses.
- Customizability: The right policy and procedure management software for your industry should utilize customizable workflows that easily integrate with the organization’s existing structure, providing a seamless transition.
- Reporting and analytics capabilities: Go one step further with response analysis by choosing a software solution that provides real-time dashboard metrics and reporting graphics based on employee responses.
- Data security and integrity: The cloud-based policy and procedure management system you choose should incorporate strong, multi-tiered security, protecting vital customer information without inhibiting user access.
Better, Smarter Policy and Procedure Management With ComplianceBridge
ComplianceBridge supports every facet of policy and procedure management, from conception to distribution and beyond. Our intuitive, automated policy management software provides organizations with the necessary tools to create, approve, and enact, workplace policies.
ComplianceBridge centralizes policy and procedure creation, letting all contributing team members collaborate in a single document with viewable version history, easily accessible cloud storage, customizable workflows for review and approval, and available templates to allow standardization.
After policies are created, updated, or revised, ComplianceBridge allows targeted distribution of those policies to relevant employees, departments or locations. Automated reminders, notifications, and real-time acknowledgement tracking guarantee employee understanding and compliance, without letting unread emails or forgotten responses go unnoticed and unchecked.
If you’re ready to take the step of optimizing policy and procedure management within your organization, let us help you make it perfect. Contact ComplianceBridge to learn more and request a free demo today!
