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No smoke without fire?
Effective policy management for the smoke-free workplace. |
With the introduction of new smoking legislation in England on July 1st business leaders need to ensure workplace policies are updated and that all staff have read, understood and accepted the new corporate regulations.
Dom Saunders, operations director at NETconsent, explains that UK PLC should take the smoking legislation as an opportunity to consider the validity and effectiveness of some of their other existing policies. Importantly, it also provides an opportunity to ensure they have proof of acceptance from all employees concerned – the consequences of not doing so, as highlighted by a recent high-profile court case in the US, could result in large fines and negative press attention.
Managing, administering and auditing an increasing number of workplace policies has historically been fairly low on the list of strategic business priorities - but that could all be about to change. With a UK-wide smoking ban in effect from July 1st, employers are having to re-think their corporate smoking policies such as closing smoking rooms and banning smoking in company vehicles. If this is to work employers must ensure that all employees are aware of and have accepted the new rules.
The importance of doing this cannot be underestimated. An example of the potential implications for failing to manage corporate policies effectively and undertake regular response audits can be illustrated by an ongoing dispute (and impending court case) in the United States. The case in question centres around IBM’s insistence that long-term employee James Pacenza used one of its terminals to visit a website it claims contained inappropriate content - in direct contravention with their acceptable Internet usage (AIU) policy. The company dismissed him immediately. Pacenza claims IBM encouraged ‘non work-related surfing’ and that they had not made him aware of their AIU policy. He has filed for compensation of $5m (£2.5m). If the two parties cannot settle the case it will be up to a judge to decide but in terms of reputation, the damage may already have been done.
It is inevitable that similar disputes will occur when the smoking ban comes into force on July 1st.
One of the biggest barriers to effective policy management to date has been resource – for mid-size and large multi-nationals manually administering the distribution, acceptance and collation of policies can be a full-time job for a dedicated team of HR professionals. This has resulted in many organisations distributing documents to all employees, often as part of their induction process, but failing to check relevance, comprehension or acceptance of corporate policies. Many businesses also either fail to audit policy acceptance entirely, or don’t do it effectively. If breaches are suspected they do not have any way of proving that the employee in question read, understood and accepted the policy in question. In IBM’s case, if it cannot prove that James Pacenza was aware of the AIU policy and had understood and accepted it, the company could pay a high price.
However, the situation can be avoided. The technology exists that enables businesses to author, distribute, manage and audit employee policies quickly, cost-effectively, and securely – and the market for Enterprise Policy Management is expanding rapidly. Faced with an increasing volume of new legislation and the need to update existing policies, managing corporate policies manually is simply not viable. Automated policy management software offers a cost-effective and 100pc reliable means of ensuring employees read, understand and accept ALL corporate documents, significantly reducing workload the business’ exposure to risk.
In addition, automation tools can be implemented to present policies to employees at log in. This means that if an individual fails to read, confirm comprehension and accept the policy the system can limit access or privileges until this has been actioned. Advances in automation technologies also enable businesses to undertake regular, random, checks to ensure that employees understand specific policies, rather than having simply accepted them.
Enterprise policy management solutions provide employers with a real-time audit trail for all policies that form an invaluable resource in the unlikely event of a dispute such as the one at IBM. In the case of IBM, being able to prove knowledge and acceptance of the policy could have saved considerable time, money and negative publicity. For English companies there is still time to ensure that all employees are aware of, and understand the implications of a failure to adhere to the new rules. Most importantly there is still time for companies to protect themselves against employees who flout the new rules.
10 Policy Management Basics
- Board level sponsorship is essential
Ensure staff understand ‘why’ its being done
- Policies must be short and to the point
Highway Code principle
- Automate the process
Save money and help it to actually happen!
- Review policies regularly
Where necessary update policies
- Assign roles & responsibilities
Plan in advance of implementation
- Document Compliance Standard
- Obtain user consent to abide by key policies
Ensure 100% returns
Define your ‘Decline’ process
- Regularly test for staff comprehension
Staff ‘Respect’ what you ‘Inspect’
Look for trends
If results lower than desirable find out why?
Document conclusions for future reviews
- Maintain a full audit trail
- Assure ‘Compliance Achievement’ reporting