Every company needs policies and procedures in order to make sure that there is an effective, efficient and legally compliant route for many of the different situations your team might find themselves in at work. Disorganized procedures and policies can lead to miscommunication, inaction, mistakes and more. Don’t leave up to the administrative team alone, get involved in ensuring that your company policies and procedures are organized using the tips below.
Create a policies team and delegate
This isn’t a suggestion you let others do all the heavy lifting. Choosing the right people for a policies team is essential. First of all, you might want to begin with a Policy Administrator. This is a crucial role, one that might be part-time or full-time, but serves as the resident expert on policy management and contract management software that you’re using. Their job is to maintain and distribute policies, procedures and forms and to provide training. A Policy Committee, on the other hand, will ensure that future policies and processes are being created with the input of the managers and administrators who play key roles in the areas they will be implemented. It centralizes the process and should feature weekly meetings that tactically look over existing policies as well as needed policies.
Format them according to their audience
A common problem in policy and process management is formatting shifts that occur over time. One might read entirely different to another, meaning they take longer for the team to get to grips with. Ensure that all policies and processes are formatted so as to be read efficiently by those using them. Standardize your format to keep them consistent, as well. If regulatory changes or otherwise lead to an update in policy format, update older policies and processes to match the new look and feel.
Keep them accessible
One of the major issues in poorly organized processes and policies is that your team members might not know where to look when they need to find them. Having glut of files in a single folder that have been poorly organized and titled is likely to lead to overwhelmed team members and plenty of confusion. Policy and contract management software from teams like https://symfact.com can help make them all the more accessible. You can structure folders by department, as well as what type of policy it is, to make them all the easier to find more quickly when they are needed.
Track all changes within your policies
When it comes to policy and contract management software, it’s also crucial that you stay in control of who has access to what. Most policy management software comes with control access options, allowing you to let different members of the team access them in different ways. Every member of staff might have the ability to view policies, for instance, but it should be your Policy Administrator and Committee that have access to edit. What’s more, the right software can help you track edits, so you can keep an eye on who made changes, when they made them, what those changes are, and why they were made, which you should keep a log of.
Create deadlines for policy creation
The right software can also ensure that you get policies and procedures in place more quickly, instead of relying on setting a deadline that people will forget. This software can, for instance, message those members of the team who need to acknowledge and approve steps in the policy creation process as well as changes to processes. This means they can disseminate the information and train their team in a shorter time period.
See them in action
Once you have your policies put together, organized, and stored in a system that makes them easily accessible, it’s time to make sure that they work effectively. A good way to do this is to choose a team of employees who are relevant to the daily work that your policies and procedures actually target. Have them carry out a test by performing the procedures. It should show you how valid the process and procedures are, as well as the prohibited actions aspect of them.
Operational challenges are going to rise in the business at one point or another. The tips above are going to ensure that your team is ready to face them pragmatically, calmly, and responsibly. Systemize the way your team handles processes and procedures in advance to spare them the difficulty of having to improvise a solution and to reduce the chances of mistakes being made along the way.
About the Author:
Rupesh Singh is freelance writer and founder of moneyoutline.com You can follow him on Google + & Facebook.