Common Criteria for Policies and procedures

One key consideration in the creation of policies and procedures is control; you should have a record for the developers, reviewers, guidelines for the release and later revision, plus a record of dates and document number.

The Procedure Metadata

Metadata refers to the information explaining the procedure, which appears at the beginning of the document. It states the references, purpose, definitions, scope, and responsibilities. You can always save the information in a template so it is accessible to everyone. The procedure then explains the actions that describe the 5Ws, detailing the purpose of the document.

Review Criteria

Create a review criterion to help you check your procedures for grammar and ensure its action based by focusing on:

1. Context to explain the activity
2. Consistency guidelines to ensure consistent outcomes repeatedly
3. Complete information that is clear and logical
4. Control to help you measure actions
5. Compliance guidelines based on internal and federal guidelines
6. Correctness for grammatical and style errors
7. Clarity to ensure it's an easy read for all employees

Distribution

Once it is complete, you can start distribution among your employees. This may include deployment during reviews or sending out departmental emails. However, you need internal audits to ensure employees read and abide by the document. Alternatively, you can create controls and targets employees can work towards, with data collection to help you assess implementation periodically.

Policies and procedures Metrics

Once you have common characteristics in your policies and procedures, you can use them to measure and audit compliance. This requires using your document repeatedly to get the best out of it. You also need to update it regularly to reflect developments within the organization or changes in regulation. Set metrics to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your policies and procedures with a daily management system that gives you access to real time data. There are several metric systems for policies and procedures available at your disposal you can customize to your organizational needs.