Policy compliance software distributes policies, collects attestations and evidences who accepted which version. What it must handle, and why a shared folder of PDFs fails an audit.
Policy compliance software publishes a policy, gets it in front of the people it binds, records that each of them accepted a specific version, and produces that evidence on demand. Writing policies is the part organisations do; the part they fail is proving three years later that a named employee had accepted the current version on the date something went wrong. A folder of PDFs cannot do that, and neither can an email announcing a new policy.
Regulators and tribunals ask two things about a policy: was it communicated, and was it applied. Communication means a record that the person received and acknowledged it, not that it existed on an intranet they had access to. Application is harder still — a policy attested by everyone and contradicted by normal practice is worse than no policy, because it evidences that the organisation knew the standard and did not meet it.
Re-attest on material change only, not on every typo. Organisations that re-issue everything annually teach people to click through without reading, which destroys the value of the attestation they are collecting.
Ettex Records covers the register: policies with owner, version, effective and review dates, plus an attestation row per person and version. Filtering by missing attestations gives the chase list, and filtering by review date shows which documents are about to go stale — the two reports anyone assessing policy compliance software will want to see first.
At least as long as the limitation period for the claims the policy is meant to defend against, which in employment matters often means several years after the person leaves.
Usually not on its own. Evidence of communication means an acknowledgement from the individual, tied to a version and a date, rather than proof that the document was available somewhere.
Annually for high-risk areas, every two to three years otherwise, plus immediately on a relevant legal or organisational change. The review matters more than the frequency — an unchanged policy re-approved deliberately is fine.
Contract compliance tracking watches obligations, service levels, price terms and renewal dates after signature. What to extract from each agreement, and where the value leaks when nobody does it.
Compliance audit management software plans audits, records findings and tracks corrective actions to closure. What it must handle, and why most audit programmes fail after the report rather than during the fieldwork.
Regulatory compliance management software maps obligations to controls, tracks regulatory change and evidences compliance. What it needs to do, and how to build the obligations register it depends on.