Hey Laurie, I just ran into your blog. I like the way that you have things set up. I think that it is creative and fun. I had a couple of quick questions for you.
· Do you feel that policy and procedure management is a problem that most organizations face?
· What is the most common way in which people manage and keep these up to date?
· Have you heard much about people using an electronic policy management solution? If so what have you heard.
I would really appreciate your feedback. It sounds like you talk with lots of HR professionals, and an answer to these questions could help me out.
Thanks,
Josh
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Dear Josh,
I’m putting your question out there for HR and knowledge management readers who have an interest in policies & procedures. (All six of you.)
I worked on a task force back in 2006 that addressed HR policy & procedure management as it related to IT asset management. It was one of the most boring assignments I’ve ever done, and that includes the time I was assigned to clean the toilets at Baskin Robbins (my first job). My fellow IT and HR colleagues on the project team were great, and the task force accomplished its goals, but I’d rather eat nails than sit through another 30 minute conference call regarding compliance.
Josh, my thoughts are simple: the only way to manage myriad policy documents in Corporate America is to install a bloated & crazy document management system. (It must be complicated and expensive, too!) Most organizations live without a flexible and smart database where you can search for policies that relate to operations, quality, IT, personnel, etc. What we lack is an intersection where policies stored, organized, and reviewed in a thoughtful manner. Where’s a corporate wiki for our policies and procedures, yo?
There may be some readers who want to chime in on this subject, Josh, but I wouldn’t recommend that you hold your breath. I’m sorry that I can’t shed more light on this subject, but I appreciate the fact that you sent in a question and visited my site.
Best,
Laurie
i’ll chime in, laurie. i’ll chime in and say that you can’t use “policies and procedures” in place of good management. and too often, when we see those massive documents spelling out what can and can’t be done, it’s really a management problem. (because seriously, people, most of this is just good, common sense.)
that’s my two cents.
all the best!
deb
I think you’re right, Deb, that people use P&Ps as a default way of managing people. You can’t defer to a set of policies in lieu of good communication. Makes me glad that I don’t manage anyone, anymore.
xo/laurie
Deb is totally correctomundo. Want better p&p management? Get a shared network, MS Word and TRAIN your managers on a regular basis as to how to manage and what the company’s expectations are (that is where the resource of the networked drive comes in, yo!). Lastly, hold them accountable. Don’t wipe their butts for them. Make it easy for them to comply.
I’ve worked in the pharma and insurance industries, and I’ve never seen so much federal regulation. Throw in the manufacturing of pharmaceutical products, and you have about 500 government agencies who all demand specific policies and procedures. These policies and procedures always demand some sort of overlap with job descriptions, training files, attendance documentation, etc.
I couldn’t take a crap in the ladies room without having it documented as a GXP certified process; furthermore, the steps by which I took a poop were stored in our global document system.
Depressing, yo.
Thank you all so much. Later on doing some further research, I have found one organization that seems to do policy management pretty well. I know that it is a borring subject, but sometimes it has to get done. Especially within some of the hospitals that I work with. Has anyone heard of PolicyTech before. They seem to do things pretty well. This makes it so you don’t have to get a way advanced doc management system, and keeps everything up to date. It also will send email reminders to people to update those policies or review them. It seems like a good system. Has any one had experience with them before. They are at http://www.policytech.com.
Thanks,
Josh, I wonder if there are some associations (like SHRM) where you can see if satisfaction with policy management systems has been benchmarked? Good luck, and thanks for reading! xo/laurie