Do you remember what you were doing in June of 2002? A new TV show called American Idol premiered.  There were reports of “alleged” fraud at Worldcom. We hadn’t invaded Iraq yet, and it would be 6 more years before the first iPhone was released.  Think about how much the world has changed since then.

What hasn’t changed are the simple recommendations for Effective Policy Management made in the whitepaper that was released that month, and soon after would be published in the Journal of Accountancy.  The whitepaper – subsequently updated in 2004 to incorporate Sarbanes-Oxley – describes a set of 10 simple activities to better manage your policies, procedures and controls as a continuous cycle.  Some of the steps include:

• Organizing your content logically
• Communicating updates on a timely basis
• Encouraging employee feedback
• Forcing periodic review to make sure content wasn’t outdated

Each step in the whitepaper includes descriptions and examples or guidnace. 

The process worked 8 years ago, it works today, and it will work 8 years from now. 

It is important to remember that technology will only provide a company with the capabilities to properly manage their information – systems can’t write the policies for you, they can’t update the policies when they should change, and they can’t read the policies for your employees.  Effective Policy Management is certainly easier to do with a solution like policyIQ, but it still requires a commitment to the process to ultimately be successful.