No matter how carefully worded and scrupulously reviewed your latest policy update may be, having the policy in place doesn’t constitute full compliance until you can provide documented proof that all of your employees have read and understood it. If the policy references a major change in local, state or federal regulations, there may be additional training involved, and that’s often when the audible groans are heard around the office or factory floor.
An Unwelcome Disruption
For many employees, training is about as attractive as root canal surgery. It usually arrives at the worst possible time, with little to no explanation as to why you need to attend. Nobody will be picking up your work while you’re in the class, which means that you’ll either be running out at every break to feverishly scan through emails on your phone, or you can look forward to a pile of work in your inbox when you are finally released from training purgatory. If the training is available online via a webinar or PowerPoint presentation, you either skip through it as quickly as possible or “multitask” with email or IM while the webinar is going on – not really what the compliance department was hoping for.
Managers and team leaders are also frustrated by training requirements. They see the value in maintaining employee skill sets and in keeping the company in compliance, but they know that it disrupts their work flow and adds an additional burden to an already overworked team. It’s no wonder that notifications and requests for confirmation of attendance often require multiple reminder emails. “Out of sight, out of mind,” seems to be the order of the day, which leaves frazzled policy and procedure specialists scrambling to close the loop on each policy update. Worse still is the underlying suspicion that all of this activity is for a new update that will probably be forgotten about as soon as the acknowledgment button has been clicked.
A Simpler Process
There is a better way. With the Acknowledgment module of our comprehensive Policy Management Software solution, the headache of tracking attendance and confirming sign-offs can be completely addressed through automation. Training requirements can be notified and scheduled well in advance, rather than showing-up at the very last minute as the final checklist item for compliance, allowing team leaders to manage their workflow accordingly. Email notifications can be scheduled in advance to remind employees of the need to read and acknowledge new policies, and for those with a demonstrated tendency to ignore or procrastinate on such requests; those emails can include managerial escalation if required.
The simplest way to make sure that an employee has read a policy is to have them acknowledge this by signing off on the policy.For more information read a complete guide to employee compliance policy and pocedure management.
For major policy updates and renewals, comprehension can also be verified through custom quizzes that offer greater proof to auditors and compliance officers than a simple acknowledgment signature. Using a centralized database and Microsoft Active Directory, all employees impacted by the specific policy can be identified, and a detailed log of confirmed and pending acknowledgments can be tracked in a real-time. No more multiple reminders via email, IM or voicemail to chase the last few stragglers.
Grabbing and retaining your employees’ attention is imperative for every organization when dealing with policies and procedures. To help in that process, here are the 3 effective tips to make policies to captivate employees.
If you’re ready to put policy cheadaches behind you once and for all, request a live demo now .
