Why Effective Policy Management Sets the Foundation for Your Risk & Compliance Program

Policies are critical for the overall governance and operations of every organization around the globe. Policies act as a guardrail for employees to act responsibly and ethically within the organization’s best interests. However, poor policy management can leave companies open to risk and non-compliance exposure.

It is within corporate policies and policy management that guidelines and parameters are set for appropriate behavior for individual employees and procedures/processes. They are the bedrock of company culture, and when managed properly, they are also the foundation for an effective risk and compliance management program.

( Related Reading > Cultivating a Risk Culture: How to Get Started )

Establishing effective policy management processes is not a one-time event. Your program needs to be ongoing and regularly reviewed for possible updates to support successful risk and compliance management activities throughout the organization.

The risk and regulatory landscapes are always evolving, and policies need to keep up with the constant pace of change, or they will soon become irrelevant and expose the organization to risk and compliance liabilities.

Benefits of Policy Management Technology

Policy management can often come across as an intimidating task, but a well-established technology architecture can help your organization streamline its processes by:

• Providing visibility across the organization and its departments to ensure that policies are managed adequately
• Helping assign policies to an established owner to develop responsibility and accountability
• Assisting in assessing policies to determine which are still relevant and current and which are out of date
• Enabling consistent, documented management processes with workflows, full audit trails, and improved reporting across the entire organization.

In many organizations, a disorganized, manual approach to policy management results in employees being unaware of what policies are even in place. Managing and tracking policies with spreadsheets, documents, and emails leads to inevitable failure.

Because policies play such a critical role in compliance and risk management, they must be continuously monitored and managed in a way that is structured and strategic. A technology solution equips organizations with the visibility and understanding to implement sound policy management, manage risk, and address compliance.

Further Reading & Resources for Effective Policy Management

• The Top 3 Policy Management Challenges & How to Solve Them: Solutions for maturing your program and how policy management technology can help.
• Compliance Risk Toolkit: Tools and insights for developing an integrated compliance management program, including a crisis management policy guidebook.