Hjournal of Law and Policy for the Information Society Year in Review

Outdated policies can get out your organization at adventure. Old policies may fail to comply with new laws and regulations. They may not accost new systems or engineering, which can result in inconsistent practices. Can you imagine a policy that nonetheless addresses whether yous can bring in floppy disks from home or discusses the proper use of fax machines? Withal there are probably policy manuals out there that still take this data in them.

If you're not sure whether you demand to review your policies and procedures, consider these statistics:

• 69% of exec u tives are not confident that their electric current policies are plenty to meet future needs.
• Only 27% of CCOs believe the compliance part has a change management process in place to place changes in laws and regulations and to comprise those changes into their policies.
• 63% of organizations say their policy management program helps reduce legal costs and resolution fourth dimension of regulatory issues and fines.

Bottom line, regularly reviewing your policies and procedures keeps your organization upwardly to appointment with the latest regulations and technology, as well as consistent with the industry's best practices. Your policies are more than consistent and effective, and they help protect the organization, the employees, and the people yous serve.

And if you're in a high-risk or highly-regulated manufacture, such as healthcare, public rubber, cyberbanking, or financial technology, yous should exist conducting regular policy reviews anyhow. Yet, information technology's a smart idea for every organization, regardless of how regulated you are.

When to review policies and procedures

With everything you lot take to do in the normal course of the workday, it's easy for the policy review process to fall through the cracks. Fifty-fifty your executives and administrators know information technology'south of import to review policies and procedures, but everything else still manages to steal their attention and energy.

But policy review is nearly effective when it's washed regularly and proactively, not in reaction to an event (more than on that in a minute). Don't wait for a problem or violation to decide to review your visitor policies. If yous had an ongoing review process, you could confidently address any issues or events that you lot face up, and head off a lot of potential bug.

Regular policy and procedure review

The best way to proactively review your policies and procedures is just to schedule time into the corporate calendar.

As a general dominion, you should review every policy between one and three years. Only almost policy management experts recommend that you lot review all your policies every year.

That's also more than easily managed with policy management software than a 3-ring folder. Skilful policy management software will let you set up workflows in club to collaborate with your policy review committee, get together feedback, and track approvals. It can even automatically remind people to read and review policies, send out signature reminders, and integrate with your training management programme.

Here are a few times you should comport an boosted policy and process review.

Organizational changes

When your system undergoes large-calibration changes, such as change in ownership or executive leadership, information technology'south a skilful thought to review your relevant policies. Your policies should align with your organisation'south mission, vision, and values, equally well as those of your senior leadership.

So whatsoever fourth dimension you have a modify in strategic management, new leadership, a merger, or your company is purchased by another, you should review your policies and procedures.

Of class, these kinds of changes won't touch on every policy. For example, a new strategic direction probably shouldn't impact your holiday policy. But it may change other twenty-four hour period-to-day policies and procedures.

Changes to laws or regulations

On the other paw, laws and governmental regulations change constantly, which will affect certain procedures. Your compliance team needs to be aware of these changes and know which policies they affect.

If at that place is a large regulatory change on the horizon, you lot should gather your policy review commission for a special meeting, rather than waiting until your annual review period.

Incorporate these pending changes into your policies as soon equally possible to help your organisation adjust to the new regulations and follow them right away. If you build the regulations into your policies early on, the transition volition exist much smoother one time the new laws get into event.

An incident or policy violation

As we said earlier, yous shouldn't look until an incident occurs to start reviewing policies and procedures. But things happen even when you don't await them or want them to. An incident of policy violation can still betoken the need for a change.

After any kind of incident, information technology's a good idea to debrief and make certain the policy had the intended effect, even if the violation even so occurred. Examine the details of the incident to see if employees followed procedures properly, and whether there were any gaps in training or problems with employee agreement of the policy.

This will help you decide whether you should revise the policy in question, make modest changes and updates, or just permit it stand.

Of grade, not every violation should result in sweeping changes. Sometimes, it'southward an isolated incident that calls for additional training or remediation for the employees involved. Sometimes, an employee merely made a bad determination, even though the policy is sound, and they should be dealt with accordingly.

But if y'all find repeated violations, especially in the aforementioned area or of the same type, and then the result may be that the policy is outdated, confusing, or requires more training.

Identifying Policies and Procedures That Demand to Be Updated

Policy review doesn't always have to issue in policy revision. Sometimes, you may need major changes and revisions, other times, y'all may just need to make a few pocket-sized tweaks. And sometimes, the policy is just fine as it is, and no revisions are needed at all.

You're not going to really change or rewrite your policy manual every year, considering that would be overkill. So how do you know which policies need to exist updated?

Here are a few questions to ask during your policy review process.

Is the policy being implemented as intended?

You don't need a major incident or loftier-profile issue to know whether employees are complying with a item policy or procedure. If they're not, you need to decide why.

Is the policy outdated? Are the procedures hard to follow? Have you introduced a new engineering or process that your policy doesn't address? Or is it a training issue?

Get feedback from your forepart-line employees, or anyone else afflicted by the policy, for some ideas on how yous can improve it.

Is the policy having the desired effect?

Every policy should accept a clear goal or objective. Over time, this will help you measure whether the policy is effective. Just there tin can be times where employees are following your policies and procedures perfectly, but they're not having the desired result.

For example, you implemented a policy to better employee safety. The employees are following information technology but accidents are even so happening at the same rate. Clearly, the policy is not doing what it's supposed to and information technology'south not having the desired upshot.

That ways y'all need to wait at where the policy is failing, inquire the people who are covered by the policy about what they would practise differently, and make sure you have procedures and tools in place to allow yous to measure everything. Perhaps information technology's a preparation upshot, or information technology's confusing and incomplete, or maybe it'due south a completely unlike problem.

Are the policies and procedures electric current and relevant?

Y'all desire to brand certain your policies and procedures align with the way your electric current systems and structures actually operate. If your policies and procedures refer back to erstwhile structures or technology — remember what we said about floppy disks and fax machines? — employees are more likely to ignore them because they think they don't matter.

For example, let's say your visitor has adopted flexible remote and work-from-home arrangements, or flex scheduling. But your attendance and tardiness policies still circumduct around the old standard schedule. Yous need to update that policy to reflect your new work system, and brand those new expectations articulate.

How to Update Policies

Yous've established a regular schedule for reviewing policies and procedures, and you've identified the policies that need to be updated. How do you actually update them? Are there any all-time practices?

Of course in that location are!

Here are a few of them for you to consider.

Determine who is involved with this policy

Your policy review and writing team volition exist dissimilar, depending on the policy. Yous don't demand the same people dealing with every policy for every department. For example, yous don't desire the sales department dictating accounting policy, or the finance department creating Information technology policies.

So pick team members based on the work they practise and the policies yous're reviewing. Your team could (and should) include supervisors who oversee the procedures, managers, Hr directors, or executives. But don't count out the frontline employees who actually do the work the policies cover.

For instance, an executive is non the platonic person to create safety policies in a manufacturing operation; the people who are working on the floor and operating the machines are the best ones for that. An Hour director is not the best person to make up one's mind on the cybersecurity policy for the organization, you need a network administrator handling that.

Once you've decided on your team, explicate why the changes are needed, and what needs to happen.

If you're making small changes, information technology may be as uncomplicated every bit just making some edits and rewrites to the policy linguistic communication. In other cases, especially as it relates to laws and governmental regulations, it's going to be a more involved process. You'll demand subject field affair experts and fifty-fifty your arrangement's legal counsel to go involved.

And if your organization is accredited or licensed, be certain to include the accreditation manager and so they can make sure your policy language meets the accreditation standards the arrangement has to follow.

Document all comments and changes to the policy

As the policy writing team does their work, make sure to document all comments, notes, and input from every team member. This kind of information is important if there are ever legal issues surrounding a later policy violation or its enforcement.

It's often helpful to appoint one policy owner to get together all the feedback and information (as well as the comments, notes, and input) and make the final edits.

Only you don't want any essential feedback to slip through the cracks.

This is where policy management software similar PowerDMS gives you total version control and a full audit trail for each document. You can keep all the information, comments, notes, and whatsoever other input in a centralized location. You can create workflows, see who has made changes, and what they are, and even rails whether all appropriate managers have signed off, and whether all employees have reviewed the policies.

If you would similar to acquire more about PowerDMS policy direction software, you can contact us to schedule a demo. Or if you're wondering what is a policy versus a procedure, yous can read about it on our blog.

longhilestered.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.powerdms.com/policy-learning-center/why-it-is-important-to-review-policies-and-procedures

Share this post