NAVEX Global Releases 2015 Ethics & Compliance Policy Management Benchmark Report

PORTLAND, Ore., May 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Ethics and compliance software and solution provider NAVEX Global announced findings from its first benchmark survey on policy management, garnering new insights from key decision-makers managing policies, procedures, employee handbooks and codes of conduct.

Overall, the survey findings indicate that policy management is still an evolving discipline and that many organizations have yet to scale their internal processes, tools and resources to meet today's growing policy management challenges.

"Complete management of a policy lifecycle allows companies to present a consistent, current message of company expectations, assess vulnerabilities, match policies to risks, integrate these policies into training and awareness and find opportunities to improve, providing stronger defenses to risks they may not have anticipated," according to Randy Stephens, J.D., CCEP, vice president of NAVEX Global's Advisory Services team and co-author of the study. "Yet most organizations—for a variety of reasons—have yet to fully embrace the ability to establish and communicate corporate culture through a robust policy management process."

Overall, the number and complexity of policy-related documents being managed is significant, with 51 percent of respondents indicating that they managed 100 or more policies, procedures and forms, and 20 percent managing more than 750 documents—each with unique requirements, functions, owners, audiences and document retention guidelines. Such variables make managing the documents—and making policy management lifecycle process efficient, repeatable, auditable, documented and defensible —a massive yet critical task.

Furthermore, the survey indicates that policy management processes are still maturing. Twenty percent of respondents indicated that they do not have a centralized approach to policy management, and 48 percent have no automated processes for tasks such as authoring, reviewing and publishing policies. Fifty-eight percent of respondents indicated they track no metrics related to the use or effectiveness of their policies. And twenty-four percent of respondents who do use metrics most commonly track only the ease of access to policies, indicating many organizations have little or no information about the impact, awareness or effectiveness of their policies.

Survey findings did indicate that those organizations using automated policy management systems are experiencing better outcomes than those without. Respondents with automated policy management systems rated their effectiveness twice as high than respondents without automated software on providing access to policies, and nearly three times as high on policy compliance, defensibility and efficiency of policy development workflow.

"Regular, cohesive and continuous efforts to identify the risks facing an organization, update policies and provide corresponding training for all employees is the foundation of a thriving, ethical and successful organization," said Andy Foose, J.D., vice president of NAVEX Global's Advisory Services team and co-author of the study. "As a result, policy management must reach beyond initial drafting and publishing. This is true for every organization, but can be particularly important for multinational companies with differing language requirements and other localization needs as well as for companies that rely on third parties to compete overseas."

To download NAVEX Global's 2015 Ethics & Compliance Policy Management Benchmark Report, please visit: www.navexglobal.com/PMBenchmarkReportPR.

About NAVEX Global's Benchmark Reports
NAVEX Global's trusted hotline, training and policy management benchmark reports help ethics and compliance professionals measure their programs against peers and industry standards to make better decisions and increase ethics and compliance program effectiveness.

About NAVEX Global
NAVEX Global's comprehensive suite of ethics and compliance software, content and services helps protect your people, reputation and bottom line. The trusted global expert to nearly 75 of the FORTUNE 100 and 8,000+ clients overall, our solutions are informed by the largest ethics and compliance community in the world.

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SOURCE NAVEX Global

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