What Is the Are the Risk of Not Reviewing Organizational Awareness and Training Policy

Outdated policies tin exit your arrangement at take a chance. Old policies may fail to comply with new laws and regulations. They may not address new systems or engineering, which tin event in inconsistent practices. Can yous imagine a policy that still addresses whether you can bring in floppy disks from home or discusses the proper utilise of fax machines? Still in that location are probably policy manuals out in that location that still have this information in them.

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

• 69% of exec u tives are non confident that their current policies are enough to meet time to come needs.
• Only 27% of CCOs believe the compliance office has a alter direction process in place to identify changes in laws and regulations and to contain those changes into their policies.
• 63% of organizations say their policy management plan helps reduce legal costs and resolution time of regulatory issues and fines.

Bottom line, regularly reviewing your policies and procedures keeps your organization up to date with the latest regulations and technology, besides equally consistent with the manufacture'due south all-time practices. Your policies are more consistent and effective, and they assist protect the organization, the employees, and the people you serve.

And if you're in a loftier-risk or highly-regulated industry, such as healthcare, public safety, banking, or financial engineering science, you should be conducting regular policy reviews anyway. However, information technology'due south a smart idea for every organization, regardless of how regulated yous are.

When to review policies and procedures

With everything you have to practice in the normal course of the workday, it's like shooting fish in a barrel for the policy review process to autumn through the cracks. Even your executives and administrators know information technology'south important to review policies and procedures, simply everything else still manages to steal their attention and energy.

Merely policy review is nigh constructive when it's washed regularly and proactively, non in reaction to an event (more than on that in a minute). Don't look for a problem or violation to decide to review your company policies. If you had an ongoing review process, you could confidently address any issues or events that you face up, and head off a lot of potential problems.

Regular policy and procedure review

The all-time style to proactively review your policies and procedures is just to schedule fourth dimension into the corporate calendar.

Every bit a general rule, you lot should review every policy between 1 and three years. But most policy management experts recommend that you review all your policies every yr.

That'due south as well more hands managed with policy direction software than a 3-band binder. Good policy management software will let you prepare workflows in order to collaborate with your policy review committee, gather feedback, and track approvals. It can even automatically remind people to read and review policies, transport out signature reminders, and integrate with your training management plan.

Here are a few times you should conduct an boosted policy and procedure review.

Organizational changes

When your system undergoes large-scale changes, such equally change in ownership or executive leadership, it's a proficient idea to review your relevant policies. Your policies should align with your system'southward mission, vision, and values, as well every bit those of your senior leadership.

So any time yous take a change in strategic direction, new leadership, a merger, or your company is purchased by another, you should review your policies and procedures.

Of course, these kinds of changes won't touch every policy. For example, a new strategic direction probably shouldn't affect your vacation policy. Simply information technology may change other 24-hour interval-to-day policies and procedures.

Changes to laws or regulations

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

If there is a big regulatory change on the horizon, yous should assemble your policy review committee for a special meeting, rather than waiting until your annual review catamenia.

Incorporate these pending changes into your policies as soon as possible to help your organisation arrange to the new regulations and follow them right away. If y'all build the regulations into your policies early on on, the transition will exist much smoother once the new laws go into effect.

An incident or policy violation

As nosotros said before, you lot shouldn't wait until an incident occurs to outset reviewing policies and procedures. Simply things happen even when you don't expect them or want them to. An incident of policy violation can still point the demand for a change.

After any kind of incident, it'due south a good idea to debrief and make sure the policy had the intended effect, even if the violation nevertheless occurred. Examine the details of the incident to run into if employees followed procedures properly, and whether there were any gaps in training or problems with employee understanding of the policy.

This will help yous decide whether you lot should revise the policy in question, make small changes and updates, or only let it stand.

Of class, not every violation should result in sweeping changes. Sometimes, information technology's an isolated incident that calls for additional training or remediation for the employees involved. Sometimes, an employee simply made a bad determination, fifty-fifty though the policy is sound, and they should be dealt with accordingly.

But if you lot find repeated violations, especially in the same area or of the same type, then the issue may be that the policy is outdated, disruptive, or requires more training.

Identifying Policies and Procedures That Need to Be Updated

Policy review doesn't e'er have to result in policy revision. Sometimes, you may need major changes and revisions, other times, you lot may just need to make a few small tweaks. And sometimes, the policy is just fine every bit it is, and no revisions are needed at all.

You're not going to actually modify or rewrite your policy manual every twelvemonth, because that would be overkill. And so how do you know which policies need to be updated?

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

Is the policy being implemented as intended?

You lot don't need a major incident or high-profile consequence to know whether employees are complying with a particular policy or process. If they're non, you demand to determine why.

Is the policy outdated? Are the procedures hard to follow? Take you introduced a new engineering science or process that your policy doesn't address? Or is information technology a training effect?

Get feedback from your front-line employees, or anyone else affected past the policy, for some ideas on how you lot can improve information technology.

Is the policy having the desired effect?

Every policy should have a clear goal or objective. Over time, this will assistance you measure whether the policy is effective. Merely there tin be times where employees are post-obit your policies and procedures perfectly, simply they're non having the desired issue.

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

That ways yous demand to await at where the policy is failing, ask the people who are covered by the policy about what they would do differently, and make sure yous have procedures and tools in place to allow you to measure everything. Perhaps it's a training consequence, or information technology'south confusing and incomplete, or maybe information technology's a completely different problem.

Are the policies and procedures electric current and relevant?

You desire to make certain your policies and procedures align with the way your current systems and structures really operate. If your policies and procedures refer back to former 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 company has adopted flexible remote and work-from-home arrangements, or flex scheduling. But your attendance and tardiness policies withal circumduct effectually the old standard schedule. You need to update that policy to reflect your new work arrangement, and brand those new expectations clear.

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 whatsoever best practices?

Of course at that place are!

Hither are a few of them for you lot to consider.

Determine who is involved with this policy

Your policy review and writing team will be different, depending on the policy. You don't need the same people dealing with every policy for every department. For example, you lot don't want the sales section dictating bookkeeping policy, or the finance department creating It policies.

And then pick team members based on the work they practice and the policies you lot'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 practice the piece of work the policies cover.

For example, an executive is not the ideal person to create rubber 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 manager is not the all-time person to decide on the cybersecurity policy for the system, you demand a network administrator handling that.

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

If you're making small-scale changes, information technology may exist as simple as just making some edits and rewrites to the policy language. In other cases, especially as it relates to laws and governmental regulations, it'southward going to be a more involved process. You'll need subject field thing experts and even your system'south legal counsel to go involved.

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

Document all comments and changes to the policy

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

Information technology's frequently helpful to appoint i policy owner to gather all the feedback and information (as well as the comments, notes, and input) and make the last edits.

Merely you don't desire any essential feedback to slip through the cracks.

This is where policy direction software like PowerDMS gives you full version command and a full audit trail for each document. You can continue all the information, comments, notes, and any other input in a centralized location. You can create workflows, run into who has fabricated changes, and what they are, and even rail whether all appropriate managers accept signed off, and whether all employees accept reviewed the policies.

If y'all would like to learn more about PowerDMS policy direction software, yous can contact united states of america to schedule a demo. Or if y'all're wondering what is a policy versus a process, you tin can read about it on our blog.

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

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