How Your Organization Should Maintain Policies

How is your organization maintaining its policies? As work and business environments continue to change and evolve, policies and procedures require maintenance and updating to remain effective.

The standard best practice is for every policy to be reviewed annually, but some tier this based on risk. High risk exposure policies are reviewed annually, with medium risks every two year and low risk every three years. It is important for your organization to ensure that:

• There is a scheduled maintenance structure for every policy so they do not get out of date - this should determine if the policy is good with no changes, needs changes, or needs to be retired.
• Your organization should have workflow and tasks to automate this.
• Your organization has intelligence on what has changed and what has impacted policies and any potential revisions needed - business change, regulatory change, and risk change.

Policies cannot just be written and forgotten, they need to be continuously reviewed and maintained. Organizations that are committed to adhering to and maintaining effective policies and procedures operate more efficiently, manage risk more effectively, and remain compliant in a dynamic environment.

The Policy Management Capability Model is an effective resource to leverage policies to protect your organization. A well-documented set of policies and training helps the organization to prevent compliance violations, manage risks, and reduces management time and effort.