Remote teams, hybrid setups, and strict compliance requirements are the norm in today’s workplaces. While these environments promote agility and flexibility, they also create new challenges.
One of the top hurdles you’ll encounter involves policy management. Transparent and well-managed policies keep your business running smoothly. They guide employee behavior, promote compliance, and protect your company from risk.
Unfortunately, managing them manually through scattered emails and outdated spreadsheets leaves the door open to disastrous oversights. Enter policy management software, a game-changer that keeps you compliant and ensures your employees have access to the latest policies and guidelines.
Our guide unpacks two key questions: “What is policy management?” and “What is policy management software?” By diving into these questions, you’ll learn how to modernize the policy lifecycle with a robust and customizable solution like hubley’s PolicyHub.
What Is Policy Management?
Policy management is the process of creating, sharing, enforcing, and updating your company’s policies and procedures. These might include everything from safety rules to employee conduct codes. The goal? Ensure everyone knows what is expected of them so they can align with your company’s values.
Manually managing policies is an absolute headache. Here’s a scenario you’ve probably seen play out firsthand. You email a new policy to hundreds of employees and task each manager with documenting who has read it in a spreadsheet. Good luck keeping the form up to date or achieving 100% compliance promptly.
These outdated methods lead to version control issues and chaotic document management. For example, an obsolete cybersecurity policy could expose your company’s data to breaches, while unclear remote work guidelines can damage team chemistry and productivity.
What Is Policy Management Software?
Policy management software is a digital solution that automates and simplifies the entire policy lifecycle. With it, you replace manual chaos with streamlined workflows, making it easy to create, distribute, and update policies. Core functions include:
- Policy Creation: Use templates to draft clear, consistent policies
- Version Control: Ensure everyone accesses the latest policy version
- Acknowledgment Tracking: Monitor attestations and send notifications to people when forms are overdue
- Targeted Distribution: Deliver policies based on role or location
- Compliance Reporting: Create audit-ready reports to reduce risk
Businesses are ditching manual systems for software that includes all of these capabilities. The result is policies that are up-to-date and visible to the entire workforce.
Key Features of Policy Management Software
A modern policy management solution comes packed with features to make policy review and handling effortless. Here’s what to look for:
Centralized Policy Repository
Easy access is a top priority of policy software solutions. To achieve this, you need to centralize all policy documentation in a secure, searchable, and accessible database. This way, employees can quickly find what they need, and administrators avoid the hassle of scattered files.
Automated Employee Acknowledgements
Send policies and track who has read them in real time. You can create an audit trail and send automated reminders to your team members before policy attestations are overdue. Automated notifications ensure accountability without requiring managers to manually follow up with each team member. You’ll save time and simplify compliance management.
Role-Based Content Targeting
Not everyone needs to read and sign off on every single policy. With a policy management system, you can deliver documents to employees based on role and location.
For instance, IT handles all matters related to data security rules, while HR receives new policies on diverse hiring practices. Limiting policy-related communications to relevant content helps promote better engagement.
Expiration Alerts and Review Scheduling
Cloud-based policy management software, such as PolicyHub, enables you to set expiration dates and receive alerts when your policies need to be updated. Schedule regular reviews to keep your policies current and compliant.
Version Tracking and Audit Logs
Policy management solutions also include risk management features such as version tracking. You can monitor every change, identify which approvers signed off on edits, and generate comprehensive policy audits.
Compliance Dashboards and Reporting Tools
Top solutions don’t just create automated workflows. They keep you informed with a customizable dashboard. You can track acknowledgment rates, policy status, and other relevant information. hubley designed PolicyHub to offer complete transparency and to enhance your compliance program.
Benefits of Using Policy Management Software
Policy management software delivers tangible benefits that simplify procedure management, save time, and reduce risks to your business. hubley PolicyHub:
Saves Time and Reduces Administrative Burden
You can streamline the approval process and automate tasks, such as policy distribution. Once your policy management processes are automated, there is a significantly lower risk of oversights. Your HR and compliance teams will be free from tedious manual work and can spend more time focusing on issues that require human attention.
Improves Compliance and Audit-Readiness
Effective policy management promotes stronger regulatory compliance, helping you stay audit-ready. You will significantly reduce the risk of fines or penalties. Effective policy management is particularly crucial in highly regulated sectors such as healthcare and finance.
Increases Employee Accountability and Awareness
Clear policies ensure that your team members understand expectations. Providing clear and well-understood guidelines enables your team members to perform at their best. You can foster a culture of personal responsibility by encouraging staff to take calculated risks and think creatively.
Minimizes Legal and Reputational Risks
You’ve worked hard to build a positive reputation within your industry. A centralized repository of policies helps you protect it. Keeping your documents in a central location and promoting accessibility reduces the chances of legal issues from non-compliance.
You can set automatic review reminders and keep your policies up to date with the latest regulatory changes. The result is a stronger compliance posture and significantly less risk of violations that may tarnish your reputation.
Streamlines Communication Across Departments or Locations
Whether your team is remote or spread across multiple offices, policy management software ensures consistent access to and communication about policies. Solutions like hubley’s PolicyHub promote ease of use and provide a single source of truth. Your team members can readily access the files they need without the hassle of searching through spreadsheets or old emails.
hubley’s PolicyHub offers all these features in one user-friendly intranet experience. The platform enables you to track changes and view the version history, simplify authoring, and set custom permissions to control who can make edits. Try hubley today!
Who Needs Policy Management Software?
Policy management software isn’t just for big corporations. If your organization needs to stay organized and compliant, it can benefit from a solution like hubley’s PolicyHub. Here are a few examples of teams that can benefit from PolicyHub:
- HR and Compliance Teams: Automate policy distribution and track compliance effortlessly
- Legal and Risk Management: Ensure policies meet regulations to reduce legal exposure
- IT Departments: Manage cybersecurity and data protection policies to safeguard sensitive information
- Remote, Hybrid, or Multi-Location Teams: Keep policies consistent across dispersed workforces
You can use policy management software to support all of these use cases and make life easier for your team. Utilize technology early and often, starting with onboarding, to ensure your employees are up-to-date on your policies and procedures from the outset.
Providing your staff with clear guidelines will increase their confidence in decision-making and foster better engagement. They will gain a better understanding of expectations and how to embody the company culture.
Choosing the Right Policy Management Tool
Selecting the right software involves evaluating your organization’s specific needs. Here are some questions to ask:
- Is it intuitive?
- Can it grow with us?
- Does it integrate well?
- Are compliance features robust?
- Is support dependable and accessible?
You need a tool that easily scales with your policies and workforce as they expand. A platform that integrates with existing HR tools or platforms, such as Microsoft Teams, will simplify the integration process. The sooner you can roll out the new technology, the sooner you can start enjoying some of the benefits outlined above.
You also want a platform with robust compliance capabilities, including audit logs and reporting tools. Once you’ve evaluated the platform, turn your attention to the provider. Are they responsive to your organization’s unique needs? Do they offer support before, during, and after the integration?
A client-focused provider like hubley sets you up for success with custom solutions and hands-on support from day one.
How PolicyHub from hubley Supports Smarter Policy Management
The key to unlocking these benefits involves integrating a user-friendly platform into your key workflows. Since hubley’s PolicyHub is built on Microsoft SharePoint, it will easily integrate into your core processes. It also feels familiar, which simplifies adoption and softens the learning curve.
PolicyHub is packed with features designed to modernize your workflows, including:
- Policy editing, revision, and removal
- Enterprise-wide document acknowledgment
- User compliance tracking
- Customizable deadlines
- Policy creation, approval, and publication
PolicyHub’s straightforward design empowers your team to manage policies without tech headaches or a steep learning curve. Whether you’re running a small to mid-sized business or overseeing policies for a large enterprise, you can adapt PolicyHub to meet your needs.
Ready to take the hassle out of policy management? Explore hubley’s PolicyHub Intranet feature today!
