In brief

• How to support the 5 different ways that users find information including AI Chat Bots.
• Formalise awareness through employee Policy attestation.
• Provide a feedback and review loop to maintain engagement.

Prefer to speak to us about our approach to Policy awareness? Book a short call with one of our team to get answers to your questions.

Policy management series

Policies and controlled documents are vital components of your organisation’s governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) strategy. In this article, we explore the importance of Policy Awareness, emphasising both proactive promotion of policies and ensuring they are easily accessible.

This series explores the key considerations at each stage of the policy lifecycle.

• Part 1: Policy Creation
• Part 2: Policy Approvals
• Part 3: Policy Awareness
• Part 4: Policy Acknowledgement
• Part 5: Policy Feedback
• Part 6: Policy Reviews

‍

Prefer video? No problem, watch a short video on Policy Awareness instead.

‍

‍

What is policy awareness?

Policy awareness refers to the extent to which employees are informed about the existence and content of organisational policies and procedures. Despite organisations investing heavily in Policy Management - whether through manual processes or advanced Policy Management Systems—many employees remain unaware of these policies or do not know where to find the current policy information when needed.

Why is it important?

• Ensuring Compliance: When employees are aware of policies, they are more likely to adhere to them, reducing the risk of non-compliance with regulatory requirements.

• Fostering Accountability: A high level of policy awareness promotes a culture of accountability, where employees understand their responsibilities and the standards expected of them.

• Mitigating Risks: Awareness of policies helps in identifying and mitigating potential risks before they escalate into significant issues. For example, knowing cybersecurity protocols can prevent data breaches.

Policy attestation

Policy Attestation, or Policy Acknowledgement, involves employees formally confirming they have read and understood a policy. A digital policy management system can streamline this process, making it simple for employees to review and attest to policies, as well as providing a formal auditable record.

Policy Express, our solution for SharePoint Policy Management, simplifies this process by automating attestations and maintaining audit trails.

Finding policies

Search

SharePoint's search functionality efficiently indexes the content of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, and PDF documents, providing basic filters for document and result types. However, the default settings can often overwhelm users with an excessive number of results.

To address this, enhancing SharePoint's search functionality is key. Classifying policies with metadata allows for more refined searches through filters, helping employees quickly find the relevant documents.

This enhancement not only streamlines the end-user search process but also reinforces SharePoint as an effective Policy Management solution.

Policy Express, our solution for SharePoint Policy Management, enhances SharePoint’s search and navigation capabilities, ensuring policies are always accessible and up-to-date.

‍

Navigation

Employees often search for policies by subject matter, such as visiting the HR site for leave policies or both HR and Finance for expense policies.

A well-designed Policy Hub allows the same policy document to appear in multiple locations, ensuring users access a single, up-to-date version. Additionally, a good Policy Management solution should maintain consistent links even after updates, preventing broken links and out-of-date documents.

AI – Natural Language Search

With the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, users expect to find content via natural language search. AI models can index policy information stored in Microsoft formats (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) as well as PDFs.

Consider implementing a dedicated AI search for your Policies, this ensures that search results are focused exclusively on published policies, avoiding irrelevant content from the broader SharePoint environment. This could be achieved through configuration of Microsoft Copilot Studio or via a custom AI solution.

Promoting policies

Intranet News

Not all policies require attestation, but ongoing promotion helps ensure adherence. Regularly featuring policies in intranet news articles can explain their importance, reinforce key points, and keep employees informed.

Using news articles as part of your ongoing communication strategy brings policies to life, making them more relatable and easier to remember, and if done well can share success stories.

Evergreen Intranet Articles

Policies and procedures often benefit from context. Creating evergreen intranet articles with embedded documents or links allows organisations to explain the "why" behind policies, aiding adherence.

For example, a new joiners page can highlight essential policies for new employees. By using tags, this curated list can automatically update to reflect all relevant tagged policies without manual updates.

‍

A policy management solution for Microsoft 365

Managing policies can be a complex and time-consuming task for quality managers and policy administrators. Policy Express solves these familiar challenges, all within Microsoft 365:

• Enables multi-step Approval Processes
• Proactive Policy Review Reminders
• Automatic PDF Conversion & Publishing
• Alerts on Orphan Policies
• Dashboard Reporting

Policy Express is a fixed-fee solution and operates entirely within your tenant, ensuring data security and eliminating dependency on external services.

Discover how Policy Express can simplify your policy management – Find out more or book a Discovery Call.

Your policy awareness plan

• Consolidate all your policies in one place – havinga trusted place makes it easy to find and manage
• Track Policies to keep them current, the quickest way to lose confidence is through out-of-date content
• Consider using a Policy Management solution such as Policy Express to automate publishing and to capture feedback

Need help with enhancing policy awareness?

Many organisations can map their existing process to the functionality of our Policy Express solution.

If your needs are more complex, then a consultancy approach can be taken, using our Policy Express solution as a starting point, we’ll work with you to deliver a bespoke solution on a fixed-fee basis.

See how Policy Express can streamline your policy publishing process and enhance your governance framework in this short explainer video.

‍