Imagine a company onboarding an employee in the UK but sending an employee policy in the UAE. Sharing wrong information can happen without a SharePoint policy management system. SharePoint’s never-ending features and advantages can help avoid this issue entirely. Companies prioritize 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 website-based collaboration platform for document management and storage systems. It helps access and share information between employees within a centralized location. On top of these benefits, SharePoint’s policy management helps automate workflows & processes within various departments in the organization.
Policy management has always been a challenge in large organizations where documents must be edited, approved and stored in a secure system that everyone can access. SharePoint, by design, happens to be such a platform that allows excellent document management capabilities along with the backing of a popular platform like Microsoft 365.
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, audio, or short video file. Templates can be used for editing or updating existing policies and sharing 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 finalize policies quickly and efficiently. Once created, the fantastic search functionality can be leveraged by employees to find the right policy and ensure compliance easily. Within a SharePoint policy management system, the entire workflow for the policy can be automated, and it can ensure that it passes through the right levels of the hierarchy before reaching the hands of the employee.
We are all aware that top-notch policies and procedures are inevitable in the organization’s effective and efficient functioning. With SharePoint, policy managers and management ensure that the employees are provided with apt and the most recent information to perform their assigned jobs diligently. Changing laws and regulations and keeping track of different document lifecycles make policy management a very complex affair. SharePoint can help a great deal with simplifying these complexities.
How Microsoft SharePoint Helps with Policy and Procedure Management?
With its robust document management capabilities, Microsoft SharePoint can help with effective and successful policy management. A SharePoint policy management system incorporates multiple functionalities and features apt for policy management, from creating new policies to their final dissemination to employees. SharePoint can effectively cater to your varying policy management requirements if your company is already in a digital workplace based on Microsoft Office 365.
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 helps you with a complete and detailed audit trail consisting of the changes made to the policies by different departments or users. This is especially relevant for large organizations that handle hundreds of policies simultaneously.
Easy and seamless access for employees
SharePoint offers easy policy access to all the employees in your organization. For example, if an organization 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 the Azure Active Directory. If you want a reliable tool to target the 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 the right people get access to the policies based on their job roles and location.
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 to ensure 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 when the policy is finalised, it is easily rolled out to the entire employee base.
Gives an excellent overall view
SharePoint, by design, offers a substantial amount of clarity to team members when it comes to seeing the total list of policies and other relevant information like date of creation, edits, approval status etc. This makes it convenient for teams to get a broad overall view of the policies and focus on the most critical ones.
Automated notifications can be configured within the SharePoint policy management system to inform employees when a policy update has been issued. The system can even alert a policy manager when a policy needs to be updated or changed. The dashboard view reflects all approved policies as a list and also lists the various actions required in individual policies. This view helps companies keep track of the policies and stay ahead of the curve regarding policy updates and 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 different versions of the same policy for reference or auditing purposes over a long 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 keep track of all the versions and also see if the right version was read by employees and was acknowledged.
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 organizations 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 obtain critical data related to reports. 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 PowerBI, you can create custom reports with critical data.
These are just some of the few ways SharePoint can be easily customized per your unique organizational needs. Even though policy management in SharePoint comes with many highly beneficial features, certain areas need attention. In other words, if you plan to implement SharePoint in your organization, some custom development or personalized configuration might be needed to turn it into a fully functional and effective policy management system.
Conclusion
Better policy management is necessary for all organizations, and Microsoft SharePoint helps you easily distribute the right policies across various departments within your firm.
As a leading SharePoint development provider in UAE, Neologix believes that SharePoint’s policy management greatly helps increase efficiency. Our experienced and professional team can help your organization personalize different Microsoft collaboration tools per your business needs.
If you want to discuss improving your organization’s policy management system, contact our expert professionals at info@neologix.ae or +971-521043266, where we can walk you through the main features.
