How to ensure all your staff have read your policies

Regardless of how big your business is, it’s vital to ensure all your employees, especially new hires, are familiar with the policies within your workplace.

It’s essential to train all employees on your corporate policies to set expectations for them. It’s also necessary to spend time with new hires to determine if they have any questions or are confused by  any of the policies before they start to work.

With so many policies required to cover different areas of operation and meet regulatory and compliance requirements, it can be challenging for your staff to stay fully up to date with all your policies and understand which ones are the most important.

This can lead to confusion in the workplace and unintentional policy violations by staff, resulting in disciplinary proceedings. It can also increase the risk of your business falling foul of any relevant rules or regulations, which can have severe financial and reputational consequences if a breach is proven.

So, ensuring your staff have read and understood your policies can be a huge challenge. Having the right policy management solution to track who has can provide peace of mind and minimise your risk of non-compliance.

Here, we look at how policy management software, like Policy Central, can make the process quick, seamless and hassle free.

The benefits of using policy management software

As a business owner, director or manager, one of the most important tasks you need to be aware of is ensuring all your staff have read – and understood – your company’s policies.

This can be done in many ways, from issuing printed documents such as staff handbooks to emailing policies, saving them in a shared drive, or using policy management software to communicate them across the business.

There are considerable drawbacks to all these methods apart from the latter one.

Relying solely on paper-based documents is unreliable and difficult to monitor and maintain.

Once physical documents are published, you have no real way of knowing who has a copy, how many versions are in circulation and who has read them. You’ll also need to chase and keep a physical record of signatures from staff to say they have read and accepted a policy.

While email is slightly better, as you can keep track of who has been sent the latest policy documents, you’ve still got no way of knowing who has read them unless you ask for proof.

And with a shared drive, although you can control which versions of a document are saved in it, staff can still accidentally move, alter or even delete a document unless you have safeguards in place. Again, you’ll need some way of tracking who has seen and accepted each policy, which can be time-consuming and frustrating.

Where policy management software has the edge over most manual or paper-based processes is it makes it easy to store all your documents in a single, secure location.

You can also keep track of version control to ensure your employees always have access to the most up to date policy documents.

A dedicated policy management platform also allows you to publish new and updated policies to staff, send automated reminders and notifications, and track which employees have signed to say they have opened, read and signed the document.

This can help significantly reduce the liability for your business when a policy violation occurs, as you’ll be able to evidence whether or not the employee(s) in question had seen and accepted it.

Tips to help ensure your staff read and accept your policies

A policy management software platform like Policy Central can help support your business’ compliance efforts.

It makes it easy to deliver policy documents to the right employees at the right time, to keep them up to date with any changes that might affect their day-to-day roles.

You can also track acknowledgements of acceptance of key documents using digital signatures, and gather evidence that your people have read and understood a policy before they can tick to accept it. Here are some of the ways a policy management tool can help:

Easy access

Policy management software stores all the latest versions of your policy documents in one place, so if staff need to see them, they can quickly and easily search for the document they’re looking for. As well as searching by keyword, most platforms provide an easy-to-browse directory and link to other relevant forms or documents without requiring a separate search.

Up-to-date Information

Policy management software features automatic version control, which ensures that staff can view only the latest versions of each document. This helps ensure that only the most up to date and accurate information can be read, and that no information will be outdated or missing.

Better communication

Platforms like Policy Central can help you improve the dissemination of policies to your staff. They allow you to publish your documents electronically and send automated notifications every time a new policy is issued, or an existing one is updated, to make sure everyone is aware.

Automatic acknowledgment

To maintain compliance, you’ll need a way of collecting and tracking the digital signatures of the employees who have read and understood each policy you publish.

Policy management software can automate this process for you, so you can continually monitor which staff have accepted a policy, which ones need chasing up, and even which employees might need a refresher because they haven’t reviewed an existing policy for a long time.

Evidence of understanding

It’s one thing sending a policy out and allowing your staff to tick a box to say they have read it, but how can you be sure they have taken on board and understood the information you’ve given them?

Policy Central gives you the ability to implement quizzes and assessments to test for understanding, which your staff must pass before they can sign to say they’ve read a policy.

You and your managers can access this information to understand and address any gaps in knowledge through training or additional information if required.

Multiple media formats

Providing a printed staff handbook might seem like a good way of giving your staff access to all your essential policies in one go, but, aside from the practical considerations detailed above, it can also be a bit dull, boring and flat.

One of the main benefits of using a policy management platform like Policy Central is that you can bring your policy documents to life with rich media content to support the message and make it easier to digest and understand. You can provide video and audio content, slide shares, training materials and other digital content that you wouldn’t be able to include with a printed paper document.

While you may be investing a good amount of cash and effort in developing and updating your company’s policies and procedures to meet your regulatory requirements, it can be counterproductive if they are not being properly communicated to your employees.

Using a dedicated policy management platform like Policy Central will make it easier to increase engagement with and understanding of your policies by your employees.

To find out more and book a free consultation, get in touch today.