We explain what policy management is and give six tips on managing policy within your business.
Making and enforcing company policies is crucial to developing a compliant and productive culture. There are expectations from stakeholders about how things should be as well as standards for various industries. Depending on the industry, policy management can be an important aspect of customer and stakeholder protection, where departments like IT and customer service have to make sure that sensitive information is not lost or leaked. Having a clear policy management system can therefore protect you from legal trouble, and help employees see corporate objectives clearly.
Companies that stay aware of the latest policies and effectively implement them reduce risk by always adapting to the changing business environment. The latest change in policies for companies trading in the EU in the finance sector, for example, is to install a whistleblowing software or a reporting hotline like Aranea that would enable people to report any misconduct or illegal behavior. Other policies can protect the quality of the product, service, or customer data.
6 Tips for Managing Policy Within Your Company:
- Not many employees are going to read your policies and remember them. Many will forget what the policies said and their aim. That is why, by ensuring that the policies align with company objectives, it is easier for employees to see the purpose of it and remember them. For example, at HX5 Encrypted, our data protection policies are hard to forget, as we are always reminded of the importance of keeping customer data secure because their safety and anonymity are one of our main objectives.
- Policies should be accessible through handheld digital devices and other means that would make it easy for employees to quickly retrieve them and act upon them.
- Have one or more members of a department aware of the policies and make sure that they are upheld. The IT department, for example, can have its own compliance officer who is always aware of the latest policies regarding the department. A compliance department would also be beneficial in making sure the whole company is compliant. By spreading awareness and responsibility, you are able to create more awareness of the policies while empowering and motivating the staff.
- While some employees find it easy to understand policies, others might find it complicated, especially if they use terms that are too field related. It is important to simplify the policies and write them down in ways that employees can easily understand.
- Use data and other KPI’s to check how effective policies are and if new ones need to be implemented.
- Make the policies easy to remember by bringing them together. Linking and explaining policies clearly can help employees understand them without feeling mentally drained.
Policy Management Gives You An Edge.
Policy management is important to your business, whether you are big or small. Policies can differ from state to state and across countries. Having your policies online allows you to change them to accommodate different jurisdictions and allows you to have an effective team that is compliant with the law. Policies can help companies achieve goals such as reducing emissions and recycling, which gives them a competitive advantage.
How Aranea Can Help In Policy Management:
Aranea, an anonymous whistleblowing software, can help employees report any misconduct to upper levels of management. Aranea, being an independent software company, encourages employees to come forward without exposing their identities and report to upper management or relevant authorities. It makes reporting policy violations easy without fear or retaliation, which allows the companies to address issues earlier on.
By compiling all reports, Aranea assists organizations in building cases and addressing trends and other persistent misconduct. By installing Aranea, organizations show stakeholders that they are committed to ethical behavior and policy compliance.