3 Types of policy management systems, and their problems

What is paper costing you?

Now that we’ve looked at filing cabinets and binders and their pitfalls, let’s look at four additional ways that paper is costing you time, money, and effort.

Paper is easy to lose, damage, or misplace

In a survey by Ponemon Institute, 71% of respondents said they were aware of a time when important paper documents got lost or misplaced. When important documents slip through the cracks, it can disrupt day-to-day operations, confuse employees, and create security issues.

With a paper system, it’s difficult keeping track of due dates for important documents, which hurts your organization’s chances for accreditation. In industries that require certifications and licenses, especially, outdated documents pose serious liability risks.

Paper comes with security risks

Paper policies also pose security risks. Apart from locking filing cabinets, administrators have little control over who can view sensitive documents.

In the same Ponemon survey, 61% of respondents said there weren’t enough controls to secure paper documents. In industries such as healthcare, a lack of document security can result in HIPAA violations.

Paper documents are also susceptible to damage. If a company doesn’t digitally back up its documents, it runs the risk of losing all its policies and essential paperwork to a fire, flood, or other disasters.

Paper policies are time-consuming to maintain and update

In many industries, the volume of paperwork required for operations is too much for one person to manage. As organizations grow, they may need to hire more administrators just to manage documents. But this can create budget strains and take up valuable administrative hours that would be better used on other projects.

Most experts suggest that organizations update policies and procedures at least annually. But if policies only exist on paper, it can be challenging to do so. Administrators must distribute printed copies of policies to collaborators, collect and interpret the suggestions, and input all the edits. Then they have to pass out the revised version and the process starts all over again.

Keeping physical backups of policies can be helpful, but using a completely paper-based system can be a drain on resources and time and expose your organization to risk.

Paper is expensive

The average office employee prints 10,000 pages every year, costing companies thousands of dollars in paper and printing costs.

Learn more about adopting a paperless policy management system.

Mixed media systems are a mix of digital and paper solutions. Chosen to reduce paper costs and inefficiencies, it’s the middle ground between paper and digital systems.

While mixed media solutions allow for file sharing and limited collaboration, they may fall short of your policy management needs. In this section, we’ll explore three common tools that organizations use in conjunction with paper.

Shared (Intranet) drives

Uploading documents

An internal shared drive saves office space and allows for easier document access while in the office. The problem is employees can’t access shared drives remotely, which is exacerbated if your employees need to reference policies in the field to do their jobs.

Not to mention, documents on shared drives can easily get duplicated, lost, or deleted. And since shared drives have limited tagging and linking capabilities, they can be confusing for employees to navigate.

Signing and tracking documents

Quality policy management tools let you collect signatures on important documents.

If you’re using a shared drive, the sign-off process usually involves printing a PDF document, signing it, and scanning it back onto the drive. Not only is this process time consuming, but it leaves room for error.

• Signed documents can easily get misplaced
• It’s hard tracking who has signed a document
• You have to manually remind staff to sign
• Lack of data security while documents lay on desks

Email

While email is still an important tool for communication, it doesn’t have workflow, smart editing, or tracking functionality. Some organization is possible via folders, but how many of your coworkers have organized email accounts? It’s far too easy for emails to get deleted, lost, or stored improperly for it to be a reliable policy management tool.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams helps small to medium sized teams communicate and collaborate. The larger your organization, or the more teams you have, the more disorganized the app becomes. Why? Teams is highly compartmentalized. You can create teams, channels within those teams, and tabs within channels, but as you create more, the number of places housing information increases exponentially, making it difficult to access important content.

Designed to be a central hub for all communication, Teams lets you co-author documents, track revision history, and integrate with various apps to expand its capabilities. Unfortunately, workflow functionality is limited, you can’t map policies to standards, and there’s no training component.

Learn more about Microsoft Teams here.

What is mixed media costing you?

Inefficiency

Using a shared drive may cut down on some of the costs associated with paper filing, but it has some of the same pitfalls. You’ll still have to spend a lot of time maintaining and distributing documents.

Collaboration is overly complicated as well, with administrators having to keep track of conflicting digital files.

Limited security

Mixed media policy management systems don’t allow for customizable security options. On most shared drives, everyone has access to everything. Research by Forrester has shown that 25% of data breaches were insider jobs, and 36% were the result of employee mistakes.

Mixed media systems can pose even more security risks than paper systems, because it’s easier for employees to alter, delete, or share files.

Plus, on-site shared drives still leave organizations at risk of losing all their files. Hard drives crash. Computers break. Files get damaged. In-office backup systems aren’t always guaranteed to work.

Outdated policies

When files are stored on a computer or shared drive, accidents happen. It’s easy to unintentionally create duplicates of documents.

Let’s say you distribute paper or email copies of a new policy but forget to update the version on the drive. This can leave employees referencing the wrong policy, which can throw a wrench in operations, lead to fines, and create liability risks.

Manual processes

Many organizations keep spreadsheets of important due dates. But without automated reminders, administrators will have to manually manage updates, due dates, employee sign-offs, and more.

When leaders make policy changes, there’s no easy way to track who made a change and when.

In the digital age, there’s no need to keep relying on these cumbersome, manual processes.

Discover more benefits of using electronic records instead of paper.