Policy management is an important area for every organisation, to help minimise risk, achieve regulatory compliance and standardise the way employees do things to drive efficiency, however, it does comes with some real challenges. Policy management software is designed to help, and can make a huge difference to successful policy management.

In this article, we’re going to take a deep dive into the world of policy management software, looking at why policy management is important, the challenges it throws up, how software can help overcome these challenges and the critical features that can help achieve success.

Why is policy management important?

Policy management is critical. Your employees need easy access to the right policies, procedures and forms so they have the correct information to carry out tasks, perform their roles and make the right decisions. When employees don’t follow the right policies, there are a number of potential risks. Outcomes can range from minor to very serious, such as if somebody is not carrying out the right processes relating to health and safety. When policy management is not carried out properly, typical issues include:

• Failing to be compliant to various regulations, opening an organisation up to regulatory or even legal action
• Problems relating to brand and reputation, either with customers or the public
• Inefficiency and lower productivity, caused when actions need to be corrected because people aren’t following the right processes
• Employees being put at risk, with an organisation failing its basic duty of care for its people.

What are the challenges of policy management?

Policy management isn’t always easy. It might sound simple and straightforward, but there are always some associated challenges.

Achieving increasingly complex regulatory compliance

Regulated industries tend to have an increasing number of requirements to minimise risk. Organisations need to achieve omplex regulatory compliance, and then demonstrate this compliance to the regulator, often by showing that all employees have read and understood a particular policy. The practicalities of carrying this out can be challenging.

Managing documents with multiple versions and multiple stakeholders

Policy management is an ensemble effort. There are usually multiple functions that might manage policies and standard operating procedures, including HR, IT, Finance, Health & Safety, Quality, Legal and more. For each of these functions, there may be multiple policy documents of which there might be multiple versions circulating, especially if users are emailing policies and downloading them to their personal drives. Managing complex policies to effectively minimise risk is not easy.

Training new and existing staff on policies and SOPs

When a person joins a company, they are usually required to read a number of policy documents or standard operating procedures relating to professional conduct, use of IT services or learning safety procedures, for example. Additionally, policies will be updated or introduced from time to time, and it will be necessary for all employees to read these or be aware of the changes.

Let’s be honest – most policies aren’t exactly a riveting read, and when your employees are already maxed out, getting them to digest them can be challenging. Doing this when many of us are still working remotely is even harder.

Tracking employee attestation through policy reads

Even if you can get your employees to access a policy, how do you know they have actually read it, and how do you show a regulator or leader that they have agreed to adhere to it? Keeping track of who has attested to a policy and who needs to be chased is a hugely challenging task that can require a substantial administrative overhead without the right approach.

Keeping documents up to date

Policy owners are very busy, and it can be an effort to get them to keep documents up to date, especially when approval is required from multiple people.

What is policy management software and how can it help?

Policy management software can be defined as any solution which helps policy owners and digital workplace teams effectively manage their content throughout its lifecycle, ensuring it is up-to-date, accurate and effectively distributed to users. Policy management software covers things like authoring, managing, distribution and tracking, and will usually include features such as content workflow, document versioning, robust access control, analytics and even search.

What are the benefits of policy management software?

Successful policy management software helps organisations resolve many of the challenges and pain points associated with policy management, delivering several headline benefits.

Minimise critical risks

Fundamentally, policy management software makes employees aware of the policies relevant to them. This minimises risks across many aspects of organisational life, from operating machinery safely to following the right GDPR protocols.

Achieve regulatory and legal compliance

Policy management software can help organisations achieve regulatory compliance by ensuring and demonstrating that employees have read policies and are following procedures accordingly. By following the right policies, you are also minimising the risk of falling foul of legal compliance issues. The good news is that data from policy management software shows that your organisation is doing what it can to enforce policies.

Streamline and automate policy management

As we’ve already established, policy management can involve a significant administrative effort. Organisations can rack up both time and cost in keeping policies up to date, tracking who has read which policy and so on. There is also the risk of data errors when things are done manually, with policy reads tracked by email and spreadsheets. Policy management software streamlines and automates aspects of policy management, removing the administrative burden, improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Support policy distribution and collaboration

The great thing about policy management software is that it supports the highly effective distribution of policy documentation, usually by keeping everything in a single central hub. This also supports effective policy collaboration, involving the multiple teams and support functions involved in policy management.

Document control to support trust

Policy management software will almost always incorporate document controls to ensure the right people are responsible for the right documents, and that the latest versions are being displayed. These controls help to drive employee trust in the fact that they are accessing the right policies.

What are the common features of policy management software?

Successful policy management software has a number of key features and functionality to look out for and consider when choosing software that will best suit your business needs. For more information, see our policy management software - buyers guide.

A central document library

At the heart of policy management software is a central document library that acts as an accessible repository of policy and procedural documents for users. The library might be divided into themes, or areas or owners. The document library will ideally have version control to ensure only the very latest versions of policies are displayed and usually the ability to restrict views to certain documents for different groups of users if necessary.

Powerful search and other findability features

Policy management software should have findability tools to help users find the policies they need including a search and configurable tags for different categories of policy to either refine searches or to browse through policies.

Policy lifecycle management tools

Policy management software should offer tools that help policy owners to manage the lifecycle of policy documents, including permission to ensure only assigned policy owners and admins can update particular policies, automated review reminders, approval workplace and content management tools to help archive policies when necessary.

Mandatory reads and attestation features

Policy management software should also have features that allow organisations to track the mandatory reads of different policies and establish attestation across targeted groups of employees. Ideally, it should work with existing user groups already used for targeting content and communications within an organisation.

Analytics and reporting

A solution should also have analytics and reporting features to track reads of different policies as well as monitor mandatory reads to support compliance processes.

Personalisation

A policy management tool should offer personalisation so that an individual user can see policies (including mandatory reads) relevant to that person, based on their individual profile. There should also be personalised views for policy owners and admins to help manage their policies.

Notifications

Policy management software should also include notifications to help drive adoption and nudge behaviours, both for users involved in employee attestation but policy owners too who need to review the policies they are responsible for.

Strong usability

A good policy management software will have strong usability, not only ensuring a great user experience for employees accessing policies and procedures, but also for policy owners and administrators. Interfaces need to be intuitive to ensure easy and effortless policy management.

Single Sign-On

A good policy management tool removes barriers to access. Single Sign-On is a must.

Who should use policy management software?

Policy management is important for every organisation – really, every organisation should be using policy management software! However, there are some industries where it is even more of a priority. This is particularly true for regulated industries where compliance is essential and demonstrating compliance generates trust with consumers, such as the healthcare industry.

Other regulated industries include utilities, engineering, energy, mining, construction, financial services, professional services, gambling, agriculture and more. Regulatory compliance can span multiple areas, including:

• Health & safety
• Safe-guarding
• Data protection and privacy (GDPR)
• Information security
• ISO standards
• Advertising
• And more!

Effective policy management is also important for employee experience - a priority for every company.

What are the features of Xoralia that help policy management?

Xoralia has a number of key features that support policy management. It includes all the common features that you would expect from a robust policy management solution (already detailed above) but also:

User-centric central policy library

Xoralia has a central policy library with all the features required such as version control, personalisation, security-trimming, configurable categories and labels, and a powerful search. The solution combines the full power of SharePoint with strong design to allow users to find the policies they need.

Mobile-ready

Xoralia is designed to provide a great experience on mobile, allowing employees who are on the go or on the frontline access to policies on their smartphone.

Seamless integration with SharePoint and Office 365

Because the base technology for Xoralia is SharePoint, it integrates perfectly with any Office 365 digital workplace, meaning:

• It’s accessible through your SharePoint intranet
• It integrates with Microsoft search
• Policies can be recommended and discussed in Microsoft Teams
• It can be used with existing SharePoint libraries
• It can work with Power Automate workflows and Power BI dashboards.

Three additional web parts that can be deployed into a SharePoint site are also available; these include documents to be read and documents due for review.

Automating recurring attestation tasks

Xoralia streamlines multiple aspects of policy administration by leveraging workflows designed in Power Automate while also recognising new additions to different Office 365 groups. This means it can automate recurring processes such as setting up the annual attestation for different groups of employees, or automatically setting up onboarding tasks for new joiners, both without policy holders having to initiate any actions. Set and forget!

Actionable reporting and tracking

Xoralia includes robust and attractive reporting and tracking relating to employee attestation processes, focused on getting the job done and gaining 100% compliance.

An exciting product roadmap

We’ve got big plans for Xoralia. It’s a product that is going to get better and better, with an active roadmap based on feedback from customers. At the time of writing planned features include:

• Xoralia for Teams
• Full screen document previewer
• A freemium version of Xoralia
• A quiz builder
• An enhanced reporting suite
• Customised notification emails
• A new targeted dashboard for users
• And more!

Easy set-up and installation

We’ve designed Xoralia to be installed easily and quickly.

Policy management is very important, particularly in regulated industries, but it comes with some challenges. Policy management software will help. If you’d like to discuss how you can improve your policy management, then get in touch, or even book a demo of Xoralia where we can walk you through the main features.