Imagine a company onboarding an employee in the UK but sending an employee policy in the UAE. Sharing incorrect information can happen without a SharePoint policy management system. SharePoint’s never-ending features and advantages can help avoid this issue entirely. Companies prioritise policy and procedure management in a paperless economy like the UAE, where employee records and policies are paramount.
What makes Microsoft SharePoint the right choice?
Microsoft SharePoint is a web-based collaboration platform for document management and storage. It helps employees access and share information in a centralised location. On top of these benefits, SharePoint’s policy management helps automate workflows & processes within various departments in the organisation.
Policy management has always been a challenge in large organisations, where documents must be edited, approved, and stored in a secure system accessible to everyone. SharePoint, by design, offers excellent document management capabilities, backed by the popular Microsoft 365 platform.
Policy managers can leverage SharePoint templates to create reusable templates for their policies. Policies can be created in various forms. It can be a document, an audio file, or a short video file. Templates can be used to edit or update existing policies and share them with the employee base. This both saves time and ensures consistency in the longer run.
Another advantage of SharePoint is co-authoring, where different team members with relevant access can work on a file together simultaneously and finalise policies quickly and efficiently. Once created, the fantastic search functionality allows employees to find the right policy and ensure compliance easily. Within a SharePoint policy management system, the entire policy workflow can be automated, ensuring it passes through the appropriate levels of the hierarchy before reaching the employee.
We are all aware that top-notch policies and procedures are inevitable in the organisation’s effective and efficient functioning. With SharePoint, policy managers and management ensure that employees have access to the most up-to-date information to perform their assigned jobs diligently. Changing laws and regulations, and tracking different document lifecycles, make policy management a very complex affair. SharePoint can help a great deal with simplifying these complexities.
Are you looking for specific SharePoint requirements?
How Microsoft SharePoint Helps with Policy and Procedure Management?
With its robust document management capabilities, Microsoft SharePoint can support effective, successful policy management. A SharePoint policy management system incorporates multiple features and functionalities for policy management, from creating new policies to their final dissemination to employees. SharePoint can effectively meet your varying policy management requirements if your company is already using a Microsoft Office 365 digital workplace.
How are companies benefiting from using a SharePoint policy management system?
When most companies purchase the official license for Microsoft 365, SharePoint will already be included in the package. Many have already used it for document management purposes. Little does one know that this amazing platform can also be used for effective policy management.
Now let’s look into detail how companies can achieve exceptional policy management in SharePoint:
Make the most of automation.
When your company wants to automate existing workflows and other related processes associated with the policy content, SharePoint can help you with its Power Automate tool.
Helps with audit trails
SharePoint provides a complete, detailed audit trail of policy changes made by different departments or users. This is especially relevant for large organisations that handle hundreds of policies simultaneously.
Easy and seamless access for employees
SharePoint offers easy access to policies for all employees in your organisation. For example, if an organisation has different departments at various locations, SharePoint can help you seamlessly roll out policy changes or updates across the globe.
Helps with targeting Policies
SharePoint helps target policies to the right groups and can easily integrate with Azure Active Directory. If you want a reliable tool to target policies to the right groups, such as policies for new hires or about an event in a particular department, SharePoint can help you save the day. It also ensures that the right people have access to the policies based on their job roles and locations.
When security matters, SharePoint is the right choice.
For companies that place the highest priority on data security, having SharePoint on their side is always the right option. The inherently secure platform offers permission-based access, ensuring that only the most relevant users can view or edit critical documents. This feature is handy for policies, where only the most relevant team members must pitch in with their inputs. Later, once the policy is finalised, it can be easily rolled out to the entire employee base.
Gives an excellent overall view
SharePoint, by design, offers team members clear visibility into the full list of policies and other relevant information, such as creation dates, edits, and approval status. This makes it convenient for teams to gain a broad overview of the policies and focus on the most critical ones.
Automated notifications can be configured in the SharePoint compliance management systemto notify employees when a policy update is issued. The system can even alert a policy manager when a policy needs updating. The dashboard view displays all approved policies as a list, along with the actions required for each policy. This view helps companies track policies and stay ahead of the curve on policy updates and their dissemination to employees.
The benefits of version history
Storing multiple versions of the same document can sometimes be confusing. But not on SharePoint. Policy managers can retain multiple versions of the same policy for reference or auditing purposes over an extended period. Imagine a critical part of a policy gets overwritten or deleted, and there is no way to retrieve it.
Such errors can become nonexistent with SharePoint. With the version management feature, a policy manager can track all versions and verify that employees read and acknowledged the correct version.
Experience collaboration on the go
SharePoint also offers the flexibility to access everything from a mobile device. For critical and time-sensitive policy updates, this helps. And in global organisations where teams are always on the move, mobile access helps coordinate and complete work on time, even if geographies and time zones separate the participants.
Leverage trackability to the max.
With SharePoint, it is possible to access critical report data. Policy managers can easily track the number of views, which employee reads which document and other necessary data points. When integrated with Active Directory and Power BI, you can create custom reports with critical data.
These are just a few ways SharePoint can be easily customised per your unique organisational needs. Even though policy management in SharePoint offers many highly beneficial features, certain areas still need attention. In other words, if you plan to implement SharePoint in your organisation, some custom development or personalised configuration may be needed to make it a fully functional and effective policy management system.
Conclusion
Better policy management is necessary for all organisations, and Microsoft SharePoint helps you easily distribute the right policies across various departments within your firm.
As a leading SharePoint development provider in the UAE, Neologix believes that SharePoint’s policy management greatly helps increase efficiency. Our experienced and professional team can help your organisation personalise Microsoft collaboration tools to meet your business needs.
If you want to discuss improving your organisation’s policy management system, contact our experts at info@neologix.ae or +971-521043266, and we can walk you through the main features.
