How to prepare for a policy management audit
- Dan Hawtrey
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.
Implementing Xoralia means that you have a robust policy management system that demonstrates an intention to take a systemic, comprehensive and fully compliant approach to policy management. Employees can easily access and find policies through a central policy library, while policy owners have a range of tools to support policy lifecycle management.
This sends a strong message to stakeholders and users alike that there is a new approach to policy management. It also sends an equally robust message to regulators, compliance bodies and certification authorities that there is a system is in place that supports compliance.
Establishing a systematic approach to policy management ensures you are always audit-ready, avoiding the repeated pattern of the “last minute” scramble that wastes tine and drains productivity.
A solution like Xoralia has all the features you need to support compliance and related reporting that will be required to pass the audit:
- Granular access control to the solution and also to each policy to ensure security and minimise risks.
- Full audit trails and compliance logs covering system configuration and revisions to every policy.
- Version control to ensure only the latest policy is in place.
- Mandatory reads and employee attestation features with granular, audit-ready reporting to support and demonstrate compliance, track which policies are read, and to help effectively communicate changes.
- Policy lifecycle management features with the ability to set approval workflow at the individual policy level to track policy reviews and notify authors and approvers.
These features go a long way to ensure you will always be audit-ready, again avoiding the last-minute pre-audit panic once and for all.
Xoralia is one of the few policy management solutions that is built around the needs of users rather than just compliance and governance teams. It is very easy to use and access, especially as it integrates effortlessly with SharePoint and Microsoft 365, so it has a familiar look and feel and is readily available via a SharePoint site, intranet or Microsoft Teams – all the places that employees spend their working day.
By reducing the barriers around policy access, it means there can be strong compliance-related adoption, giving auditors clear evidence of policy awareness. Similarly, Xoralia is also super-easy to use for policy owners and authors. The result again reduces the last-minute stress that comes with the audit preparation.
As already noted, an organisation will experience different kinds of policy management audits, and they may also occur at different levels across organisational structures. All too often policy management solutions adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, but Xoralia is very flexible so you can help prepare for any type of audit and the related reporting.
Uniquely, Xoralia comes with over twenty configurable SharePoint widgets, dashboards and reports that can be tailored to the exact scope of each audit and display evidence on screen that will support the specific audit process involved.
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?
When people worked in offices and they needed to ask a procedural question or where to get hold of an essential policy, they could ask the person sitting next to them or visit the go-to colleague around the corner who has been here since the year dot and has the answer to everything.
When working remotely either fully or hybrid, there Is no friendly go-to-person nearby to ask. For many working remotely, the only living thing they might see all day is the cat!
People working from home or out of the office must have clear and easy online access to the information and documents they need to get things done and perform their role on a self-serve basis. This includes easy access to critical policies, procedures and related guidelines which are essential to day-to-day work.
Organisations with active remote and hybrid working are usually based on a principle that employees should be able to carry out their role successfully from wherever they happen to be – either in the office, at home or from another location entirely. If employees are significantly disadvantaged out of the office, then it makes it harder to successfully implement remote work and productivity will suffer.
Access to information from anywhere – including policies, procedures and guidelines – is therefore essential in establishing a level playing field relating to hybrid and remote work. This principle can also apply to frontline workers who also usually work away from desks and on the go.
There will often be policies which are specifically targeted to or are particularly relevant to remote and hybrid employees. Some of these will be policies which relate to hybrid working patterns while others might relate to the specifics of homeworking – for example ergonomics or the potential for cybersecurity threats.
When fully remote employees join a business, they will invariably go through an onboarding process which will also principally be remote. As part of this a remote employee is very likely to need to read a set of company policies which must be easy to access. HR teams may also need to keep track of whether a new hire has actually read a policy and may even need to report on it.
Regulated sectors and organisations with standards such as ISO 27001 will need to demonstrate that they have a robust policy management approach in place, and likely an employee attestation (mandatory reads) process as part of that. Regulators and certification bodies need to know that approaches apply to hybrid and remote workers to the same extent as they do for those fully based in the office.
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?
The story behind Xoralia
Xoralia was built by the team at Content Formula, an intranet and digital workplace consultancy that has built SharePoint intranets for some of the world’s most famous companies. Now, most companies want their policies and procedures on the intranet but they don’t just want to store them there, they also want tools to help better manage them. Over the years we came across just about every single requirement for a policy management system. As this article above explains, there are gaps in SharePoint and so we never built what in our mind was the perfect policy management system.
However, one of our clients challenged us to build something for them that filled all the gaps but still used SharePoint at the back end. We had a great relationship with them and agreed to share the budget to do this, provided we could then market the solution to others. That was in 2019. We’re now on version 3 of Xoralia and the product has grown and evolved a lot.
3 benefits you can expect from Xoralia
Make it easy to find policies
Centralised policy library with powerful search and filtering
Reduce administrative burden
Automations and notifications so that all policy tasks are carried out on time
Demonstrate compliance and best practice
Sophisticated tracking and dashboards to drive and measure compliance.
And lots more!
What our clients say
AppSource review
A great time saver and tool for document management
We have found Xoralia to be very beneficial to us as it has allowed us to focus on other area’s as Xoralia will take care of who has read the documents and notify them if they have not. A great time saver and tool for document management all together.
Tim Galer
IT Coordinator
Hughes
Ideal partner for our regulated environment
LifeArc operates in a strictly regulated sector where compliance and information security are critical. It is essential that LifeArc’s workforce have easy and effortless access to the latest up-to-date policies and procedures, which is the structure Xoralia gave us.
Adam Lythgoe
IT Manager
LifeArc
How to get started with Xoralia
Step 1: Explore or request a demo
Start a free trial for instant, hands-on access, or fill out our form to book a personalised demo at a time that suits you.
Step 2: Get a price proposal
If Xoralia looks right for your organisation, ask us for a tailored quote. We’ll outline any options and packages to fit your needs.
Step 3: Install and launch
Set up Xoralia in your environment with our support. We’ll provide onboarding, training, and full assistance to get your team up and running quickly.
Here's what you'll get
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Central policy library
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Search and filter tools
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Mandatory read policies with attestations
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Quizzes
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Notifications and alerts
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Employee dashboard
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Line manager dashboard
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Works on mobile, in Teams and SharePoint
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New policy creation workflows
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Policy update workflows
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Review and approval gates
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Policy version history
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Compliance dashboard
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Audit trail
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Full reporting
And last but not least:
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Professional implementation service and support
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Evergreen software – frequent updates and improvements
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Comes with our "it just works" support warranty – we’ll fix any bugs, often before you even notice
Ready to get started?
Connect with us to streamline your policy management and ensure effortless compliance.
AppSource review
Uniting excellence in integration and features for seamless policy management
As the newly appointed IT Manager at our company, I was tasked with implementing the Xoralia policy management tool, and the experience has been nothing short of impressive.
Rian Stuart
IT Manager
TwinStream
