Policy management software is the process of creating, reviewing, approving, organizing, and distributing all policy and procedure documents within an organization. Policy management allows companies to adapt as needed, ditching old policy glue for a modern, easy-to-understand format. Employees in an organization need to stay abreast of the latest threats, risks, and data, and perform their jobs by applicable rules and regulations. Policy management helps organizations ensure that all employees know how to operate and comply with their policies.
Here are the articles to explain, What are the types and advantages of policy management software?
Policy management software helps users manage policies from creation to approval and every step in between according to the organization’s established workflow. Policy management allows team leaders to distribute and share policies with all relevant employees. This process further helps organizations comply with external regulations and respond quickly to situations such as customer upgrades or security breaches.
Types of Policy Management
There are various types of policy management, some more effective than others. The type a company chooses depends on its size, budget, and preferences.
- Paper: Outline your policies on physical paper, using old-fashioned methods like filing cabinets and binders to organize them. This approach is generally considered risky because paper policies are easily lost or damaged, are prone to security risks, and are time-consuming to update. Also, frequent printing can be expensive.
- Mixed media: a mix of paper and digital solutions. It helps reduce paper usage and inefficiencies. This type of policy management allows organizations to collaborate and distribute policy documents more easily than paper-based ones. Mixed media policy management often involves uploading documents to shared intranet drives, digitally signing and tracking documents, and collaborating using tools such as Gmail, Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, and more. This method is more secure than paper-based methods but is still prone to inefficiencies such as outdated or duplicate documents. Employees need to manually update these policies.
- Digitally Based: Organize, update and distribute documents as efficiently as possible using cloud-based software. The software allows organizations to automate workflows and update policies in real-time, eliminating the need to distribute new policy documents every time a change occurs.
Advantages of Using Policy Management
Governance policies help teams stay up-to-date with the latest releases, keeping employees compliant in all situations.
- Easy to update. Policy management helps prevent the loss of critical updates and new policies passed from managers to employees.
- Risk Management. Employees who understand what is expected of them to comply with relevant policies can reduce their organization’s risk of non-compliance.
- Save time by automating workflows. Policy management in large organizations brings policymakers closer to employees and gives policymakers greater influence. It also helps teams automate workflows to save time.
- Report easily. Policy Management Documents all policies and revisions in one central location for easy reporting.
- Accountability and transparency. Policy management helps track which employees made changes and makes the process more accountable and transparent.
Basic Elements of Policy Management
Policy management requires a system to maintain and update documentation. This is often referred to as the Policy Catalog. The more advanced the directory, the better it is for the organization.
The basic elements of a good policy management system include:
- Policy Review: Periodic reviews ensure all policies are up to date. This requires employees and managers to share, edit and approve files promptly.
- Policy reporting: Status reporting is important for reporting to leadership and audit. They should allow for frequent and easy reporting.
- Policy Approvals: Leads the approval of policies and lets the policy management team track the approval status of each policy.
- Policy revisions: Policy management should facilitate easy updates that identify the latest version.
Policy Management Best Practices
A policy management system must be in place to be successful and maintained regularly to achieve positive outcomes. Follow these best practices:
- Using the Software. Companies without an organized policy management system experience difficulties with policy consistency and communication. Additionally, manually distributing policies on paper, spreadsheets, or basic cloud storage systems leaves too much room for error. With software, organizations can automatically update company-wide policies. Policy versions are located in a central location, providing continuous access to all relevant stakeholders. Organizations also don’t have to worry about working with multiple policy versions at the same time, as the software always displays the newer version.
- Prioritize consistency. Policy management needs to be consistent so that employees understand the importance of policies. Proper policy management provides managers with consistent disciplinary guidance that is necessary for fair treatment.
- Make the policy accessible. Policies should be easily accessible to employees throughout the organization. Giving employees the ability to search and find the policy they’re looking for helps them understand exactly what the policy expects them to do so they can respond to the situation accordingly.
- Provide policy training. Training based on company policy helps employees contextualize policy and improve long-term policy compliance management.
- Review often. Reviewing and updating policies is an important part of policy management. Policies change frequently, and a good policy management system will keep up with those changes.
