Detailed Policy Management Software With a Simple UI
Policies and procedures are essential for any organisation. Taken together, policies and procedures provide a road map for day-to-day operations. They ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, give guidance for decision-making, and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of internal processes.
Unfortunately, employees often perceive policies and procedures to be a dry and boring subject and don’t always appreciate their importance. Policies and procedures won’t work in your organisation if your employees don’t follow them, or worse, don’t even know about or understand them.
Most organisations use internal domains, SharePoint or Google Docs to store their policies, associated procedures and forms. Whilst these solutions offer a hierarchical folder structure, shared access to staff and search tools, their broader functionality is very limited, which can cause significant operational and compliance issues, sometimes leading to regulatory sanction.
Software Designed To Have Your Back
Compliance Pod’s procedure and policy management system has been developed to give organisations a broad set of powerful tools to ensure that policies and procedures are kept up to date, that staff have read and understood them and that those published on public forums are always the latest versions.
All the functionality outlined below is highly configurable, yet incredibly easy to use, for both policy administrators and staff.
Policy & Procedure Administration
Policy and procedure management software provides administrators with an intuitive management portal to control the creation, updating and publishing of policies.
- Each policy allows you to upload multiple documents in PDF, Microsoft Office and a wide range of other file formats, allowing you to group associated procedures and worksheets with the overriding policy
- In addition to documents, you can also upload other content to a policy, such as embedded videos, which can be used to provide detailed instructions to staff to aid them in completing tasks
- All policies and associated documents have full version control functionality, old versions are archived and can be easily accessed and reviewed as required
- All actions performed within the system are tracked and any changes can be audited to identify when a change was actioned and by whom
- Policies can be organised into user-defined categories and for each policy, you can create associated keyword tags to facilitate quick search and retrieval
- If you use a keyword search to look for a document, the system will analyse the document name, any keyword tags you have created and the text of the document itself to return results
- Next review date is set for each policy and document within that policy and this is tracked by the system and administrators will be alerted to upcoming and passed review dates
- When a policy is created, you select the members of staff the policy applies to, often this is all staff but you can also make certain policies only available to those in specific locations, departments or job roles and can even exclude selected individuals if required
- Only staff with administrator privileges can add or update policies
Policy Libraries and Publishing
It is critically important that all stakeholders can easily access policies and that the current policy is the only one in use across the organisation.
- When you create a policy in our policy and procedure management system you are in fact creating a microsite (a mini website) which hosts all the files related to that policy
- The microsite is hosted on a secure server and is accessed via a unique weblink
- To create a basic policy library for staff, the weblinks to the policies can be collated into a collection (online searchable index) which can be accessed from any web browser and as such, can be easily incorporated into your existing infrastructure
- When publishing policies on a website, simply link to the microsite URL
- When an administrator creates a new policy or makes a change to an existing policy, the policy microsite is instantly updated, and as everyone is accessing the policy from the microsite, there is no chance of outdated policies being in circulation, unless they are in print, nothing we can do about that!
- When a user accesses a policy, documents in PDF format can be viewed within the microsite and other file formats can be opened in the relevant programme e.g. Microsoft Office applications
- Staff who are active users of the policy management system can access all policies relevant to them via their personal policy library, either online or via the mobile app and when changes are made, they will be alerted via the systems inbuilt messaging system
Distributing policies to staff and compliance testing
Our policy and procedure management software incorporates a powerful policy distribution system that allows you to ensure that all relevant staff are aware of policy changes, acknowledge they have read them and where required, a test that they have understood them.
- When you create or update a policy you have the option to send that policy to staff via email, in-app message or text in the form of a unique link
- If you designate the policy as Mandatory, when a member of staff opens the link, they will be asked to click to confirm that they have read and understood the policy
- An administration tool will allow you to track which members of staff have acknowledged understanding of Mandatory policies and you can send reminder emails, in-app and text messages to those who have not yet responded
- If you want to ensure staff have read and understood a policy, you can add another step by creating a survey or test within that policy that staff must complete after reading the material:
- Quickly create, yes/no, multiple-choice and dropdown questions and set a pass rate
- When staff open the policy, they can review the content of the microsite and are then directed to take the test
- If they hit the required pass rate the system flags that member of staff as compliant in that policy
- If they fail the test, they will have to take the test again until they pass, this doesn’t have to be immediately but until they pass, they won’t be compliant in that policy
- The survey system is fully incorporated into the system and Managers can see which of their staff have taken the test, who has passed/failed and their scores, you can also see how long staff took to complete the test to help eliminate cheating
- Whilst the survey system is usually used to test the understanding of new or significantly altered policies, some organisations periodically re-test their staff in their understanding of key policies by simply redistributing the policy every few months
- We believe that through listening to and understanding the challenges faced by a wide range of organisations, across multiple sectors, we have created a highly flexible and uniquely powerful solution for managing policies and procedures.
Software That Mimics Your Branding and Colours
Our policy management system alongside all our Compliance Pod applications is ‘white-label software’ and customisable in every sense of the word. Customise permissions, branding, reports etc. and take your business to the next level with software that blends in with internal material.
Why Do You Need Procedure Management Software?
Consistent Processes and Structures
Transparency For Decision Making
Better Equipped To Manage Risk
Policies identify company rules, while procedures detail specific actions which can be helpful in creating consistent processes within the business. This ensures everyone in the business knows what to do, who to go to, and everything is managed more effectively.
Policy and procedure management software builds a more transparent view of decision making, detailing who’s responsible for what and who each employee would report to. By detailing business processes, managing them and storing them appropriately this can ensure smooth, efficient workings.
Managing risk is a large factor of any business and should be treated as such. Our policy management system in tandem with our governance risk compliance software allows your business to plan, manage and mitigate risk by detailing processes and sticking to them.
Better Quality of Service
A Safer Work Place
Let Employees Know You Care
Managing policies and procedures will not only have an impact on internal on goings but also external! A client/customer-facing business will also share the same benefits with their customers. By detailing processes, sticking to them and working more consistently, businesses are able to provide a more professional, quality service.
When following policies put in place employees are less likely to have accidents at work, which is only a good thing for your business. This limits liability and risk within your organisation, as well as avoiding interruptions due to accidents.
By detailing such processes such as safety, annual leave, risk assessment etc. it sends a message to your employees letting them know that you care and have their best interests at heart. Using our policy management system, conveying this message just got easier with powerful policy distribution.
What Policies Need Managing?
Policies and procedures are everywhere in business, most day-to-day actions are usually associated with some type of internal process. All of these processes need managing to evaluate, manage and limit risk as well as clearly delegate responsibilities. Our policy and procedure management system is here to help with just that.
These are some of the standard policies that businesses should have:
- IT and Employee Monitoring
- Annual Leave
- Workplace Health and Safety Policy
- Risk Assessment Procedure
- Social Media Policy
- Code of Conduct
- Internet and Email Usage Policy
- Confidential Information Policy
Who Could Benefit From Policy Management Software?
Small Businesses
IT
Construction
As a small business with a limited pool of assets and resources, your time can be quickly taken up by ensuring the smooth running of day-to-day operations. With our dedicated policy and procedure management system you can cross one more thing off your list.
With computer systems, networks, and resources are accompanied by a host of policies and procedures to comply by. From AUP and security awareness to remote access and internet and email usage policy, a policy management system can prove to be an invaluable asset.
Having employees out of the office and on-site can host a range of risk, mainly to do with policies and procedures. From workplace health and safety policies to risk assessments, it’s vital your employees sign these and abide by them.