VP Human Resources, VP Operations, HR Compliance

As your company's Vice President, Human Resources, you want to ensure not only that the "right tone at the top" is established in your organization, but also that there is a general and accepted code of conduct that determines ethical behavior throughout the organization. If you are the Vice President, Operations, you want to ensure that all individuals and groups of employees know their roles, responsibilities and tasks when it comes to corporate governance. You want to ensure that all mandated governmental and regulatory policies are properly enforced and that the company is current with all employee policies, procedures and security postures to ensure that compliance is being carried out and that sensitive data remains secure.

You want to have an enterprise system in place so that you are able to communicate and confirm that employees throughout the organization have received, reviewed, understood, accepted, and are fulfilling their roles in being fully compliant with corporate policies. Further, you need documentation that proves the compliance activities have actually taken place and that employees are performing their responsibilities.

When new policies are developed, you will also need a mechanism that allows you to update the entire governance system. You will need to distribute the new policies to the right people who need to have them and act on them. You want to be able to efficiently communicate policy and policy changes to all employees.

Last, when exposures or incidents do occur, you want to have a system in place that first identifies that an incident has occurred. Next, it is important to determine if there was a policy in place to cover that situation. If not, new policy needs to be created and communicated. If policy was in effect, you may need to determine who was responsible, if that employee knew what to do, and how to remedy the situation. It is a closed loop and dynamic system that continues to evolve and change.

It is no small task to ensure that your organization is abiding by all the regulations, and if the policies and requirements are fulfilling the intent of those regulations. Are the policies detailed enough so that there is no ambiguity? Do employees know and understand what is expected, how to do the required tasks, and how to report the results?

Take for example one enterprise software firm that underwent a Sarbanes-Oxley audit only to discover that there was insufficient communication to employees. As a result, HR was told to establish an employee communication program that would administer and confirm ethics conduct.

Taking all these issues into account, Polivec developed an integrated suite of software that allows HR or Operations to create, communicate, and certify employee understanding and acknowledgement of company policy. The solution incorporates not only the people, but also the processes, automated and manual tasks, and technology into an organization's governance initiatives. The solution offers extensive reporting tools – Executive dashboards and other reports -- that enable HR or Operations to easily prove employee and system compliance to regulatory auditors and enforcers. These reports provide documentation that employees have received, reviewed, accepted and passed quizzes on corporate policies.

These are the questions you need to ask yourself about your current governance solutions:

1. Do you have an established program to establish the right "tone at the top"?
2. Do you have policies in place that address the regulations your company needs to abide by?
3. Can you measure your employees understanding of the policies?
4. Do your employees understand protection and privacy of data?
5. Can you prove that the rules are being properly followed?
6. Can you prove this to external auditors?

Then you need to think seriously about Polivec's Enterprise Governance Solution. The Solution gives you an integrated, enterprise view of all governance activities and allows you to manage risk, reduce cost, minimize complexity and protect your current investments in compliance.