Every organization has policies and procedures which are shared with the employees, partners, suppliers etc.
In an ideal world everything will be fine, however from experience we all know things can go wrong.
- The management decides on the topics of a training program without checking with the staff or key players what problems employees face. While this may fulfill compliance requirements it won’t address the main challenges for which the training program was needed. For this a simple survey will help address the issue.
- You may have a new policy on using a new process where users sign up but behind the scenes people still continue to use the old system. Eg You may have a password policy however an employee may still save crucial passwords in text format for easy access on the desktop. For this apart from an audit, an end user acknowledgement will help address the issue.
1. Surveys
Using surveys you can ensure any grassroots challenges are understood and action is taken.
Get feedback on a specific topic from your staff using a survey which could be as simple as listing a bunch of topics for them to choose for a training session and additionally allowing them to input any new topic not already listed in the survey. We have used this effectively for our training systems. This could be applied to any process to get feelers from members of your organization before any action is taken.
We suggest the following in google forms for surveys
- Give users to select multiple checkboxes by selecting checkbox from the dropdown against a question. Keep repeating this until all options are given
- We always suggest to allow users to add their own options by adding a new question with Paragraph selected against the question “Please make your suggestion or give additional options not mentioned in the list”
- We also suggest the following in the “settings” section for anonymous surveys and allowing users to submit more than one response.
a. Responses > Collect email addresses: be switched off
b. Responses > Allow response editing: to be turned off
c. Responses > Limit to 1 response: to be switched off - Or the following where you don’t wish it to be anonymous
a. Responses > Collect email addresses: be switched on
b. Responses > Allow response editing: to be turned off
c. Responses > Restrict to users in <organization name> and its trusted organizations: to be switched on (for google workspace account)
2. Acknowledgements
Using acknowledgement pushes the end user to complete the process of following a new/modified policy and enables those who face a problem to reach out helping organizations to close gaps.
Failing to do so means you may have communicated the process and wrt your legal requirements you may be covered, however failing an audit you wont know if its properly implemented at the grassroot level. An acknowledgement a few days (giving users enough time to adapt) after the process has been executed helps ensure any bottlenecks are removed.
Eg use google forms and create an acknowledgement section prompting users to tick and confirm they follow a proper process.
We suggest the following on the settings section Google forms for acknowledgement to collect verified email and ensure each user submits only once.
- Responses > Collect email addresses: be switched on and choose “verified”
- Responses > Allow response editing: to be turned off
- Responses > Restrict to users in <organization name> and its trusted organizations: to be switched on (for google workspace account)
- Responses > Limit to 1 response: to be switched on
In the Questions section for ensuring the form can be submitted only if the requirements are being complied (tick is mandatory)
- Add the details on what is being acknowledged using “add title and description”.
- Add a question and for the question field add something along the lines “I confirm that I have read, understood, and will comply with the policies, procedures and guidelines listed above.” and select checkboxes against the question from the drop down.
- Add another question with the text “Your full name (First-name Middle-name Surname)” and select “short answer” from the dropdown
- Enable required against both the above Questions