How to Ensure Policies are Effectively Communicated

Does your organization effectively communicate its policies? Policies help your organization operate more efficiently, helps you manage risk, stay compliant, and maintain a culture of responsibility and ethics, and employees need to be regularly communicated with to ensure they are informed and on board with the policy management framework.

The communication of policies is critical not only because is ensures employees are informed but it ensures that they know what is expected of them. The best ways to communicate policies are:

• Having a standard template and style guide so policies are easy to identify and written consistently in consistent terms.
• Having a single policy portal so policies are easy to find and access
• Automation of tasks and workflows for policy activities and reminders/updates of policies and policy changes via email and text

It is common for organizations to successfully communicate policies when they are initially developed or when a new employee is brought on but keeping policies and the communication of those policies in sync with our current, dynamic business environment can be incredibly difficult. Business is continuously changing and your organization needs to ensure that all employees are notified and kept up to date on relevant changes.

The Policy Management Capability Model is an effective resource to leverage policies to protect your organization. A well-documented set of policies and training helps the organization to prevent compliance violations, manage risks, and reduces management time and effort.