What to do next?

Things to do based on what level your organisation is today.

Next Steps - Document policies and processes 

This may seem like a mountain of work, but there are shortcuts (such as subscribing to a service like ours). But there are a few things to consider.

1. Audience. Who is this for? From a regulation perspective. Documented policies and processes are a way of demonstrating you have material to communicate to your staff. This means you should write it for them. Keeping the sentences short and snappy mean they will be easier to read. 

2. Language. One of the challenges in this industry is the current demographics of the workforce. Having staff with ‘English as a second language’ or having lower levels of formal education means that it is even more important we keep it simple. ‘Easy to read’ is not only for participants but for our staff too. Simple language that everyone can understand is goal.  

3. Structure. The aim here is to make it easier to find what they are looking for. For those with a trained eye, scanning large paragraphs of text and finding keywords is a valuable skill. For the rest of us, we need formatting to highlight keywords and separation of paragraphs to help us focus. One way to do this is to add a title line for a paragraph when the context changes. This will make the text easy to scan and enable users to quickly to find the relevant part without needing to read all the text. 

Next Steps – Ensure staff understand what they are responsible for 

Here are some takeaways to consider to take your policies and processes to the next level.

1. Separate documents vs ‘one big manual’. When policies and processes were predominately written to be printed. It was common to put an entire subject into one document instead of separating it. For instance, the incident management policy included the incident management process. The problem with that approach is that without clear separation, over time this approach led to larger documents. Even with a more ‘electronic’ based approach, you can easily link related documents for easier retrieval. The other benefit of separation means the content can be more to the point and requires less ‘prose’ to link paragraphs of text together. 

2. Storage for retrieval. Policies and processes were popularised as documents to be printed and put on the shelf in binders. This was the standard practice ‘back in the day’. As workplaces become more digital, this was replaced by virtual storage in digital versions of binders called ‘folders. This made it easier for those who were responsible for managing the content to organise. Unfortunately, this approach does not necessarily make it easier for the general staff member who did not come up with the folder structure. Point here is to store policies and processes in places where your staff can find them. 

3. Access latest versions. You need to keep copies of old policies and processes. However, this does not mean that everyone needs to access them. It could be arguably worse for a staff member to get hold of an old policy that now contains non-compliances. Make sure old versions are marked so that staff know that they should go and retrieve the latest. Or have a system that stops employees from keeping their own editable forms. 

4. Applicability. Sometimes it might be tough to understand if and when a policy should be applied. One easy way to do this is to have this information in a table at the beginning of the policy so that it is not ‘weaved into’ the rest of the policy. 

Next Steps – Ensuring compliance 

Here are some tips on how to keep your policies and processes up to date. 

1. Annual reviews. Your policies and processes do not necessarily need to be updated annually, but they should be reviewed. This is easily achieved by recording next review dates to ensure they are not forgotten.  

2. Continuous improvement. When things do not go necessarily to plan, the relevant policy and/or process should be reviewed to see if there are any improvements that could be adopted. This should be done as soon as practicably possible so that risk of recurrence is reduced 

3. Staff onboarding. Assuming you have easy to understand policies and processes that are relevant to your staff, then they should be embedded into your new employee onboarding process. More proactive organisations know that its not just about providing access to them, but to make this a more interactive experience. We cannot expect staff to recall the details of each policy and process but knowing where to go to find the answer should any uncertainty arise is important. 

Next Steps – Make it proactive! 

How can you prove that you have a compliant organisation? Well you need proof. 

1. Digital fingerprints. Any system used by staff will have the ability to log what they have done and when. Though the reporting on this may be time consuming.  Having a closer look at these will provide insights into how compliant your staff are. Even the base statistic on how many of your staff have accessed policies and processes would be enlightening and of value to track over time to track continuous improvement. 

2. Other records. Though more time consuming than digital methods, manually tracked registers easily allows organisations to prove that they are proactively managing compliance. The catch here is that they need to be completed regularly and consistently without bias. Hiding issues just to ‘tick the box’ will do the organisation no benefits over time.  

Next Steps – Keep it up 

If you are here, keep it up! Part of being in this industry is that we all play a factor on improving it together. We would love to help you share your story.