Following with interest!

I've never heard of this but the more I think about it, the more I want it. Especially if could can use it to flag policies that are out of date or people can use it to post comments or queries on policies.

Jumping in - with my Chair of Governor hat on, the number of policies the school has in place is crazy. I keep a spreadsheet with dates last checked/next needing to be checked, but it’s still too manual for my liking. Maybe you’ve accidentally spotted a gap in the market…!

In reply to Maya:

A very quick Google search suggests that various providers have thought of this already - there seems to be quite a lot of stuff around, some of it mentioning HR policy management as a relevant application.

As the concept is new to me too, I've no idea about costs, quality, performance, etc. of the products on offer, but for anyone already spending a lot of time and effort on managing policies,sparing a bit of time to research the market might be well worthwhile.

Since the need appears to be recognised, it's interesting if none of the standard HRIS providers include it in their packages.  Maybe it's one of those things that's only economically feasible for very large, complex organisations.

Thank you all for your comments!

The idea is definitely not original and there are indeed already some providers who offer specialised policy management software.

To provide some background on my seeking feedback:

Our Ops team have already done some research and put forward a few providers. But the project team which I am part of thought it’d be a good idea to ask around amongst our networks (not just HR) for recommendations from other organisations who perhaps use a similar software already.

Interestingly, so far noone reported using a system of this kind. Which might be interpreted in different ways but I am inclined to think that this is for the reason that not many organisations use a specialised policy tool. The reasons may be size, budgets, etc.

Our HR software has a basic policy acceptance feature but not sufficient for the requirements, and we want to keep the system for HR matters only to avoid confusing staff about accountabilities.

Thanks a lot to everyone again, it was my first post on the CIPD forum and it was great to have your input!

It might be worth looking at Microsoft Sharepoint which was used in a previous organisation I worked for. Individuals can have policies assigned to them as far as I recollect with update reminders for when the expire. It also maintained historical documents so you could see what was policy was live at a point in time which was helpful for HR policies.
As with a lot of Microsoft stuff, getting the setup right is key so it might not be helpful if you don’t have that infrastructure.

In reply to Toria:

Thanks for the insight! That’s really helpful. In fact we’ve recently introduced Sharepoint Online and only starting to make the most of the MS365 apps. I will suggest to the project manager that we should review the Sharepoint policy acceptance tool alongside other systems.

In reply to Jana:

Over a decade ago I used to deal with a company called "PolicyMatter" they were subsumed within someone else but the gist of their system was that when a new policy came out the relevant employees would be presented with it when they logged on, they would have to read and answer a couple of questions on the policy to check understood. This would then be recorded.
Their application was for city dealers etc, but it could be adapted for general HR policies and I am sure it has been.

I was involved in a similar system revolving around checking homeworkers could be remotely audited on H&S checks etc re their home office and the record of that saved in a gdpr compliant manner.

In reply to Joanne Garnham:

I realise this is a bit of an old post, but for those that come here doing research, I thought I'd respond. I am the founder of a company called Xoralia. We have built a policy management software solution also called Xoralia. It does everything discussed in this thread:

• provides a single, central place for employees to go to find policies
• employees can browse or search
• mandatory reads, requiring attestation from the employee
• quiz feature to test employee knowledge on a particular policy
• notifications and reminders
• reporting, showing who has and who hasn't read a policy
• line manager dashboards so they can see which of their direct reports have read or not read their policies
• recurring reads (great for policies that need to be read annually)
• update reminders for policy owners so that policies are checked and kept up to date
• review and approval workflows for new and updated policies
• version control

Xoralia is built to work with SharePoint and Microsoft 365 so IT departments tend to like it too!

If you'd like a demo then do please visit the Xoralia website or drop me a message.