How to prepare for a policy management audit

For a full overview, please see our complete guide to policy management software.

A policy management audit is a structured review of whether your organisation’s policies are up to date, properly approved, accessible to relevant employees, and consistently acknowledged. Audits typically surface outdated versions, missing sign-off records, and gaps in review cycles, each of which represents a compliance and legal risk if left unaddressed before an external inspection or incident.

Regulatory audits and compliance-related inspections are commonplace in regulated industries, but also across non-regulated sectors too. If you work in financial services, you’ll need to meet stringent compliance requirements unique to the sector. Healthcare companies need to tick the boxes on HIPAA. Technology providers almost always want to achieve ISO 27001 certification. GDPR, health & safety and other compliance areas can also involve regular audits. And so on.

The stress of the policy management audit

Despite being such a regular part of working life, the words “inspection” and “audit” can still strike fear into the heart of business functions. Passing these audits is critical so there can be a lot at stake.

Teams and individuals also feel like their work is under the spotlight, with an external body inspecting the detail around management processes, controls, documentation and more, to ensure it meets compliance and regulatory requirements and standards.

A successful audit usually involves having a robust, systemic, comprehensive and enterprise-wide approach to areas such as policy management. The system needs to guarantee, as far as is possible, that policies are up to date, employees can access them, secure controls are in place, employees are aware of changes to policies, and more.

But very often organisations are some way off having that in place, so getting ready for an inspection or policy management audit becomes a stressful, last-minute, mad scramble to get everything in order.

In this post we’re going to explore what a policy management audit is and how you can prepare for one so that:

• You avoid all those last-minute shenanigans and reduce associated stress
• You will be in a position of strength to pass the audit, ensuring and demonstrating compliance.

We also look at how a policy management solution like Xoralia can ensure that you are always effectively “audit-ready”.

What is a policy management audit?

A policy management audit occurs when an organisation needs to provide documentation for some kind of compliance, regulatory or legal requirement, such as:

A policy management audit may also be necessary when:

Preparing for an audit will involve getting your policies, policy management processes and related “paperwork” in order, as well as related reporting, so that it ticks all the necessary boxes.

Why is a policy management audit so important?

Compliance and certification are absolutely critical for businesses. Failing an audit in a highly regulated sector is often unthinkable and has the potential to result in financial penalties, reputational damage and operational disruption.  

In some industries there are multiple regulations to consider, for example:

Certification in areas such as ISO 27001 is also very important for particular businesses - for example for B2B technology companies having ISO 27001 in place is often a requirement for procurement, so failing an audit may even impact revenue.

What might you need to demonstrate during a policy management audit?

Policy management audits come in all shapes and sizes so what you need to demonstrate will vary, but typically you will need to show that:

What are the challenges around not being audit-ready for a policy management audit?

Some organisations that face policy management audits repeatedly run into challenges because they are not audit-ready:

• Low compliance adoption: There is no systematic or user-friendly system in place for policy management so the levels of adoption around compliance are consistently low, and there is always a lot of last-minute work to do.
• Stressful audit preparation: This means that preparing for the audit is inevitably stressful and disruptive for everyone involved, when it really does not have to be.
• Repeated pattern: Instead of building on the work that has gone into preparing for the audit, the same mistakes are made again and again, so the same “last-minute scramble” to be audit-ready occurs next time around or is repeated across different areas of the organisation.

How can a policy management solution like Xoralia ensure you are audit-ready?

When UK medical research charity LifeArc contacted the Xoralia team they were days away from an important ISO 27001 certification audit and needed to reorganise their policies and procedures in order to gain certification. In a heavily regulated industry where privacy is paramount, ISO 27001 was regarded as essential.

In just three days we were able to deploy Xoralia, get a robust policy management solution in place, and ensure they were audit ready. (Yes, they passed!).

Here’s what implementing a solution Xoralia will provide to ensure you are audit ready.

How should you prepare for an upcoming audit?

The best approach is to have an ongoing robust policy management system in place that covers areas such as audit trails, mandatory reads and reporting, meaning that you are always near audit ready.

Here, investing in a policy management solution like Xoralia puts you in a position of strength to be ready for an audit. If you only have a manual approach to policy management rather than dedicated policy management software, it far more difficult and very time-consuming to get everything lined up in time for the audit.

However, even with a policy management solution in place, there are still very likely to be a few gaps to fill and issues to iron out. It is therefore critical to be properly prepared for the audit.

Four steps to prepare for a policy management audit

Communicate as early as possible to all stakeholders

It might sound obvious, but the single most important thing is to communicate any confirmed policy management audit as early as possible, so everyone is forewarned and can prepare in time.

Assess areas of weakness

Work out where there are current areas of weakness around policy management and where you might end up failing an audit - usually where things are informal, ad hoc or incomplete.

To carry out an assessment you will likely need to know and understand the audit requirements well, and you may need to carry out a discovery exercise involving different stakeholders in what is effectively a “pre-audit audit” to identify areas of weakness and missing policies across different teams and functions.

Work out what the policy management system needs to look like to pass the audit

What does policy management need to look like at the time of the audit to pass and what can realistically be achieved in that time?

If it is just a few policies needing updating, then this is going to be easily achievable. However, if your approach to policy management up to now has been ad hoc, you may even need to have a new policy management solution in place.  

Make an overall plan and process and communicate to different stakeholders

It’s time to make a plan that gets you from where you are now to where you need to be to pass the audit. You may need to get consensus from different business stakeholders who will then likely have different actions to complete relating to the policies they are responsible for.

This all may sound daunting but actually when there is a sense of urgency and you have momentum, as well as good communication across all involved, it is incredible what can be achieved in a quick time frame.

Why is policy management critical for remote and hybrid workers?

Preparing for a policy management audit

No one enjoys policy management audits, but they are important. If you’d like to see how Xoralia can help you always be ready for an audit, then why not book a free demo?