Once each year, I and all of my colleagues here at Resources Global Professionals review our corporate policies and fill out associated sign-off forms, indicating we've read the policies and we agree to comply with them. It's actually a very smooth process, which is managed efficiently and is easy for employees like myself to participate in. This is due in large part to the tool Resources uses to manage the process. I'll give you one guess what that tool is. That's right: policyIQ!

The foundation of this process is the Effective Policy Management policyIQ offers. Building upon this, it's easy to implement a corresponding policy sign-off process using policyIQ's Forms Management feature in just a few simple steps.

1.  Identify (or create) a Group for the desired respondents

Simply set up a Group to include the desired respondents (the folks you want to read the policies and provide a sign-off). Assuming your respondents don't have other policyIQ responsibilities (such as managing content) they can be Standard Users, meaning they will have access to read published policyIQ content and respond to Forms.

 

2.  Create the Form Template to collect the responses

Each policy will have a related Form, which accomplishes a number of goals. First, it displays the policy directly in the body, so your readers see the policy information without needing to navigate any further. Next, it provides the reader with a sign-off statement that you have designed; you're free to customize the language to present the compliance statement of your choosing.

3.  Assign to respondents and manage the responses in policyIQ!

When the Forms are ready to be sent out to respondents, the Administrator assigns it out to the relevant Group. The Form is then conveniently placed on the reader's policyIQ Dashboard, easily accessible to them upon login. They open the Form, read the associated policy, indicate their compliance, and then submit the Form. It's automatically routed to the approver, who reviews, approves and archives it.

As you can see, this is a huge improvement over the way this process might run if managed manually. There are no reams of paper to print out and drop off on respondents' desks. You don't need to point your employees to a network directory, where they may find an older, outdated copy of the policy. You don't need to keep track of and archive a multitude of email responses.

If you'd like to consider implementing a policy sign-off process for your organization, let us know. We'd be happy to work with you to develop a solution tailored specifically to your needs!