The 5 Pillars of Policy Management

Healthcare organizations often focus their efforts around five key anchors, commonly referred to as the Five Pillars of Excellence first introduced in the Studer Initiatives. These pillars are influential in how healthcare organizations prioritize goals, make decisions, and plan for the future. However, while the pillars were originally engineered for healthcare settings such as hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, we firmly believe that by applying these pillars to policy management, they can benefit any organization, regardless of industry. 

The 5 pillars are listed as Service, Quality, People, Finance, and Growth.

If you take a process such as policy and procedure management and apply these pillars, you can add clarity to your goals, and in doing so, you create a more clear path forward. With this as your foundation, you can ensure that every policy decision you make furthers your mission and brings you one step closer to achieving excellence in all things. 

But, how exactly do these pillars apply to policy management? We’ll tell you below. 

Pillars of Policy Management

By organizing your company’s goals into these 5 pillars of policy management, you can help ensure that every action taken, every decision made, and every policy you put into place brings your organization closer to excellence in all things.

Service

From a business perspective, when we think of service, we often think of customer service – the assistance, advice, and support offered to both potential and existing customers. This could look like helping a client onboard your software, providing help if there are issues with a product, or simply remembering and appreciating customers who you’ve met with before. Regardless of what customer service means in your industry, however, one thing is absolutely essential: how you deal with policies and procedures will have a direct impact on the level of excellence you can provide.

Your goals under the Service pillar should be aimed at improving the customer’s experience when working with you. For example, a goal under the Service pillar might be to reduce the time it takes employees to access company policies. When customers come to your employees with a question or request, shortening the amount of time it takes them to find policies will enable them to provide a quicker response – and in both healthcare and business, time is an asset. 

Quality

Another pillar of excellence is Quality, both in terms of client relations and your product or service itself. Software providers want their systems to operate smoothly, universities want their educators to be well-trained, hospitals want their nursing staff to be on top of their game, and everyone should strive to go above and beyond for their customers. However, if your policy management process isn’t up to par, doing these things will be challenging (to say the least). 

For example, if you have outdated policies floating around, it will be exceedingly difficult for employees to know how to handle novel situations. So, a goal under the Quality pillar might be to reduce the number of outdated policies. This will prevent employees from answering customer queries with incorrect information, accidentally violating the law, or simply following an inefficient process when a better one exists. It ensures that the work your organization produces uses best practices and best practices alone. 

People

An organization is only as strong as the people it’s composed of, so you’ll want your policies to help ensure their experience is a good one. By prioritizing diversity and inclusion, rewarding employees for their efforts, and increasing engagement throughout the organization, you can develop a culture that fosters empowerment and respect. 

A big part of this is creating policies that ensure a fair, positive working environment, as no one can work their best under less-than-ideal conditions. Accordingly, a goal under the People pillar could be to create a policy committee. These groups help manage every aspect of the policy lifecycle – from developing appropriate policies to providing ongoing maintenance – ensuring your organization is equipped with the policies it needs for a positive, supportive culture. 

Finance

At the end of the day, the goal of most businesses is to make money. However, you can’t do that all too effectively without adequate policy management, because as the saying goes, time is money. When employees have to scour the Earth for the appropriate policy, accidentally use an outdated version, or otherwise can’t find what they need in a timely manner, their productivity suffers, and your company pays the price. So, a goal under the Finance pillar could be to improve staff productivity with effective policy management. When everything is up to date and easily accessible, your employees save valuable time and your customers get the assistance they need faster – everyone benefits.  

Growth

A healthy organization isn’t just focused on the present. There’s no questioning that your organization’s current needs are important, but the true sign of a healthy company is whether or not it can grow. To ensure that it does, a goal under the Growth pillar might be to increase opportunities for career advancement within the organization. By allowing employees to evolve in their roles, you’ll not only attract top talent, but motivate your existing employees to achieve as much as they can. 

Excel With ComplianceBridge

When leaders can embrace these 5 pillars, they’re clearly communicated across the organization, and every decision made is framed around them, excellence becomes an inherent part of the organization’s culture.  

With ComplianceBridge, achieving this excellence doesn’t have to be a struggle. We engineer software to help you manage the entire policy lifecycle, from collaborative creation to targeted distribution to ongoing maintenance. Our policy and procedure management software has all the tools you need to ensure your company is operating as smoothly as possible. Ready to get started? Request a demo of ComplianceBridge today!