When Policy Documents Become Impossible to Track

It all starts out so nicely. There’s a policy manual, there’s probably a shared drive, and everybody knows where they’re supposed to go to find what they need. But what actually happens over time? The document gets edited. A new version gets saved (and maybe it’s even the same as the last saved version, just a different title). Someone emails a new version to the team. And eventually, no one knows which version is the “current” version.

And then the messy version of this begins to be the “norm.” Different departments are operating off of different versions of the same policy. HR has one version, operations has another, and compliance has the “final” one (but one that might be six months outdated). When the time comes for an audit, or for some question that needs to be compliant with a policy, figuring out which version to find suddenly becomes a project of its own.

Why It Falls Apart

It’s not that people don’t care about tracking policies accordingly. When it comes to the tracking down of policies, traditional methods aren’t working for how most companies are operating these days. It’s easy to imagine all the changes that can happen over the course of one year in an organization. Changes to compliance regulations. Changes to internal procedures. Changes to safety procedures.

Each one of these changes has to be documented, added to a company’s policy manual, approved, distributed, and acknowledged as received by all relevant employees. When all of those changes are left to just people’s memories (and not on modern technology with automated distribution), things begin falling through the cracks.

It becomes a nightmare to track policies accordingly. Documents end up with file names like “HR Policy Final,” “HR Policy Final v2,” and “HR Policy Final ACTUAL.” And the head of compliance isn’t quite sure which one was actually approved at which meeting. And when there’s a ripple effect of different people in different departments tracking the policies “their own way,” this mess becomes an exposed risk when it comes time for audits.

The Compliance Headache

Here’s where the headache gets expensive for companies: When you’re being audited, there can’t be any doubt about what your current policy manual is regarding any specific issue/topic. An “I think it’s this one but let me check” attitude won’t fly with compliance auditors. This type of uncertainty sends red flags up in the air. Companies have failed audits—not because they don’t have good enough policies—but because they can’t reasonably prove what the current policy is that employees had access to at the time of the inspection.

When it comes to headaches, this one is bound to get costly over time as well. Companies interested in stopping this mess look to find the best policy management software solutions so that there’s one source of truth (one “manual” if you will) that everyone involved can refer to across the organization.

The distribution of such a document can become a problem of its own and compound the issue of keeping a document current and of having employees acknowledge that it has been received. Employees aren’t perfect; things get missed from time to time. Emails containing new policy documents can get lost in the shuffle. People can accidentally delete files, or they can get misplaced altogether! If someone revises the same document again by accident and labels it accordingly, someone is bound to end up confused again.

The Headache of Not Having Everyone on the Same Page

The impact of all of this is more than making sure that employees know what they’re supposed to do; this can impact employees’ productivity regarding their everyday tasks as well. Employees might have questions that require compliance’s answers, but if compliance is not operating on the same “page” (figuratively and literally), this can slow down business operations.

Employees are stuck handing out outdated onboarding documents. New employees don’t have current policies or procedures they can refer to, and managers are constantly being asked questions about policies that they know are outdated.

This inconsistency is bound to impact productivity as well; how many times would you have to answer employees’ questions about policies if everyone had access to the most current policy document? Even though it seems basic, people waste time just finding the document and waiting for responses.

The Unseen Costs

On top of compliance risks regarding tracking policy documents, there are also unforeseen costs. They might not be apparent in monetary values, but they can still stack up over time. In addition to legal issues resulting from not having the policies tracked properly, employees waste a considerable amount of time addressing various issues related to document tracking.

These “costs” of wasting time can come in various forms. What is an employee’s time worth searching for documents regarding policy updates someone could have informed them about during a team meeting? How many meetings have been conducted simply because everyone is working off different “playbooks” (even though they should be working off the same policy manual)?

How many team meetings should have been avoided just by having the most current version of the policy in one place? How many people do not need to ask the same questions about the policy if they read the current version? Then there’s the additional time spent updating documents whenever policies need changes.

One set of changes can create hours of work for someone in compliance trying to figure out which documents need updates and ensuring that every document that requires updating has been updated.

Getting Back on Track

Instead of looking for more ways for people to mess up tracking documents, companies need to recognize that people can’t keep up when organizations have issues they need to address manually (but systematically).

Companies need policies and procedures in place so that tracking documents doesn’t become an afterthought. Companies need documentation that indicates what is current.

Once companies make this a systematic process instead of an erratic one, everyone involved in the audit enjoys specific benefits: responses are quick because there’s one place to look; people won’t be unnecessarily interrogated by auditors because tracking is in order; teams can finally work together instead of reinventing the wheel individually.

The chaos of policy documents being impossible to track is only inevitable if companies outgrow their processes but don’t revamp how they manage their critical documents and policies.