Proper documents for procedures and policies are most critical in the areas of compliance, quality and customer service, performance, security and risk according to a newly released study conducted by Information Mapping, Inc, a Waltham, MA-based information communications company.
When asked what key initiatives are most important to the organization, 25% of the 150 companies participating in the study responded that risk assessment was the most important. Other initiatives included HIPAA compliance (20%), Sarbanes-Oxley (19%), Six Sigma (17%) and FDA regulations (11%).
Interestingly, 21% of the respondents had either received warnings or failed an audit due to policy and procedure issues. This might be because employees are getting information by "asking a person in the next cube." "When you combine the complexity and rate of change in regulations with employee turnover, it is easy to see how relying on the knowledge of the person next door is a recipe for compliance disaster in many companies," noted Deborah Kenny, vice president and general manager of IMI's Learning Solutions.
Companies seem to be catching on to the importance of providing easy-to-access, standardized information as 73% of those surveyed are moving the information online.
