[author: Linda Meikle]

Let's face it, navigating the landscape of HR policies and compliance regulations can feel like wandering through a labyrinth blindfolded. For HR and Compliance professionals, ensuring employees have access to the knowledge they need to stay on the right path and aligned with your company values and protocols is paramount. But let's be honest, it's not always sunshine and rainbows.

So, let’s delve into some of the challenges you may face in keeping your workforce informed.

The email abyss

We've all been there. You open your inbox to find a sea of emails, many with subject lines that scream urgency. Important policy updates often get lost in this digital deluge. Your employees are probably feeling the strain with:

• Information overload: Being bombarded with emails daily is tiring. A policy update nestled amongst marketing announcements, spam, social invites and the many other notifications that land in their inbox is easily missed or forgotten.
• Read but not remembered: Even if an employee opens the email, the key takeaways might not stick. Have you ever skimmed an email or policy and then immediately forgotten what the message was? Your employees have too. Relying solely on email for crucial information creates a knowledge retention issue.
• Fishing for answers: When employees need to revisit a policy update later, searching through a cluttered inbox becomes a time-consuming and frustrating exercise. It also risks them unearthing old information that may be out of date.

The dusty policy graveyard

The problem doesn't end with communication challenges. Imagine a scenario where an employee urgently needs to find a specific policy, but the company intranet resembles a dusty archive. Policies might be:

• Hidden in plain sight and buried deep within a disorganized folder structure. This makes finding crucial policies an archaeological dig, requiring spelunking and sleuthing skills to unearth
• Outdated and out of touch policies pose a problem. If your people are reading old policies, they won’t have what they need to succeed. Further complicating this, regulations and best practices are constantly evolving, so policies must keep pace with change. A disordered policy house creates compliance risk and leaves employees uninformed about their rights and responsibilities
• Inconsistent and confusing policies scattered across various locations, create the risk of encountering inconsistencies or conflicting information. This leads to confusion and undermines employee trust – not to mention the business risk it poses

The answer is out there, but where?

Let's say an employee, determined to do the right thing, has a question about a specific policy. However, the path to finding an answer might be unclear. This creates several problems like:

• Uncertainty breeding inaction. If employees are unsure where to find answers, they might hesitate to seek clarification. This can lead to them making decisions based on assumptions or outdated information.
• The misinformation maze that’s created in the absence of clear communication channels. If information is inaccessible, employees might turn to unreliable sources like watercooler gossip or outdated online resources, potentially leading to the spread of misinformation.
• The frustration factor stemming from the inability to find answers quickly and easily is incredibly challenging for employees. This can negatively impact morale and productivity.

These challenges paint a picture of a workforce struggling to navigate a complex landscape. And in reality, they likely are. But fear not, there is a way through the labyrinth.

When employee experience is prioritized, you’ll increase the likelihood for information retention and aligning with policies and procedures because your team will know what is expected of them. While simply putting policies, training, code of conduct and other resources at your team’s fingertips isn’t a golden ticket to compliance success, it does make it a lot more likely.

If this sounds like trying to boil the ocean and you’re not sure where to start, we’ve got some exciting news for you. NAVEX One Compliance Hub delivers a single destination for employee compliance task management. With Compliance Hub, your employees are guided through critical compliance tasks, including training and code of conduct, with a streamlined experience and convenient access.

Show me Compliance Assistant

View original article at Risk & Compliance Matters