HR From Anywhere: Managing Company Policies & Compliance

As the workplace of today has been transitioning, perhaps permanently, to hybrid working it’s never been more important to ensure key company policies and documents are accessible from one easy-to-access cloud-based location. Not only this but to remain compliant you need to be able to ensure your employees are able to acknowledge that they’ve read key documents such as remote working policies or perhaps return to the office instructions.

To make sure your staff can still easily access important policies and documents from any location is clearly essential during periods of remote working. However, even if you have most of your employees in the office, you may have regional sales staff or members of staff on maternity leave or off sick, who also still need to be able to access certain policies and documents relating to their situation. Not only this but keeping all company policies in one easy-to-access cloud location helps your business stay organised, consistent, and productive, lessening the need for staff to be asking their managers where documents are being kept and allowing you to access documents you may need for audit purposes. The location of the documents has to be secure, and up to date meaning the correct versions need to be stored in these areas and it should be easy for the right individual, to be able to update them easily when needed.

Having staff acknowledge documents for your audit trail is of paramount importance too. It may be possible to use spreadsheets and ask staff to fill this in once they’ve seen documents via Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, however, this is not likely to be accurate and gives you yet another document to have to manage. Storing in cloud-based drives is also impractical, insecure and it’s likely to become disorganised. Paper storage clearly isn’t practical either as using paper to share and store documents is costly, and every time you need to update these documents, you will need to reprint them for each staff member, even potentially posting letters to any regional staff. This is why the easiest way to ensure you can see who has acknowledged the documents is to use an HR tech solution that supports this. 

Using HR Software for company document management

HR tech, such as HR software, allows you to create one simple and easy-to-use section in your system which contains everything your employees legally need to know and can also include things you want them to know, which might be specific to your business, office space, and/or sector. Allowing for this information to be stored in one accessible area also enhances the employee experience by having a specific highly informative section that they can dip in and out of when necessary. In line with this, being able to store video documentation allows you to be able to create more engaging and informative internal communications.

The security used in HR software, such as different access controls, can mean that you can allow for updates all in the same area as the document is stored. By this I mean you’re not having to provide read/write access to individuals who don’t need it, whilst also being able to allow senior management to upload new or updated versions of documents, in the same place where you might only want other members of staff to have read-only access. This means you don’t have different versions of the same documents flying around, so everyone is able to read the correct policies. 

Streamlining your onboarding and offboarding processes is also something you can do with HR tech company document storage. With all the correct documentation being stored in one area, anyone who is new to the company or who may be leaving the company will have access to any information they may need to know about during the process. This can help your HR teams point them to one clear area, and you can use clearly defined naming conventions or labels to identify what information they need to know. 

Finally, a key feature that separates HR tech from typical cloud storage is the ability to track who has read or acknowledged these policies. This is particularly important during times when you have staff working remotely, or particularly during times of potential crisis, such as the current pandemic. Working-from-home policies, return-to-work instructions, and any ongoing safety procedures need to be clearly outlined, and easy to find and any managers will need to know exactly which members of staff have read these and ensure they are clear on them. By being able to report on such audit trails, you can rest assured that your employees are well informed and it gives you peace of mind that staff know how to adhere to the policies you've outlined.

Cloud-based HR document storage

Check out our video showing how our company documents module can help you manage your policies and compliance from home:

If you’re looking for the best HR software to support your company document management, look no further than Appogee HR! Why not try us for yourself for 14 days to find out if we could work for you? It’s completely free to try us out, there’s no need for a credit card and no obligation to purchase.