Managing Policies and Procedures for Real Results
Every day, our world becomes more and more regulated. Your Human Resources team can end up spending most of its time just keeping up with and interpreting constantly changing industry standards and government regulations and requirements, as well as the technologies and procedures your company uses to manage them-sometimes at the expense of other important responsibilities, like helping your company do business. With so many policies and procedures to measure and manage, failure to integrate ongoing compliance into your Enterprise Policy Management (EPM) processes can put your business at risk.
Keeping in Compliance
Compliance is defined as acting according to certain accepted standards. Many of these standards and policies are developed by regulatory agencies that establish boundaries for a variety of topics, such as Discrimination, Safety and Financial Reporting. The creation of a policy in an organization requires consistency in the language used and the intended definition established by a regulatory agency and documented with version controls for traceability.
With the intensive manual process that has been the "norm" for so long, Human Resources has been responsible for keeping a company secure through enforcement of policies regulated by agencies and internal procedures. The challenge for this group is to understand how all the policies in your organization relate to certain users, groups, departments, or even companies.
The new demands surrounding compliance make it absolutely critical to establish one central source of data for both internal and external auditors to promote consistency. Audit ability, traceability and visibility are all hot buttons driving the need for EPM solutions that can deliver on the requirement to track compliance metrics from development to archival.
Streamlining Policy Management
iComply™ provides you with an efficient way to manage policy life cycles by allowing for automation and procedural improvements through well-designed templates and categorization. PMG's iComply™ Platform lets you streamline the processes and technologies that help you manage your policy information and gain access to critical information so you can monitor and improve your policy management procedures, ultimately helping you increase efficiency and reduce costs related to policy management.
The depth and breadth of compliance can be overwhelming. Human resources can avoid drowning in control-monitoring detail by using technology tools to provide a "compliance snapshot" of their organization at any time. The acceleration of reporting deadlines introduces the need for speed, consistency and accuracy that can only be met by automating manual activities and embedding controls throughout Enterprise Policy Management (EPM) processes. iComply™ provides automation and procedural improvements through well-designed templates and categorization.
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Compliance can benefit from one central source of data for both internal and external auditors to promote consistency
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Insight into operations provided by EPM systems can often identify and reduce potential litigation risks in business units, department units, employees, etc.
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Better monitoring of internal controls by EPM systems can prevent material misstatements
Through the challenges of understanding regulations, a company must also provide traceability for the creation, dissemination, and ongoing acceptance of a policy. Not only does an organization have to mandate acceptance to certain regulatory policies, but must maintain a schedule of renewal, track employees that transfer into departments or groups that require specific policy acceptance, and could be exposed to gaps in policy issuance iComply™ provides automation and procedural improvements through well-designed templates and categorization.
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Well-controlled processes and systems potentially reduce the need for extensive audits (both internal and external)
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Maintaining consistency of version control and workflow management, increases reliability of compliance
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Automation of policy issuance based on user role or department ensures accuracy in regulatory reporting.
For more information on iComply™ and our other product offerings, please visit our Downloads page.
