Co-operative Assistance Network Limited

Policies and Procedures Check

Is your policy set consistent and unambiguous? Are they legally compliant? Are there gaps? Are all required procedures and insurances in place?

Having recently carried out an extensive policy review ourselves, we have the expertise to help you index your policy set and identify gaps and inconsistencies enabling you to draw up an action plan to bring your policy management under better control. This service will take about two hours to gather data. We like to do this by meeting two or three key players either face-to-face or by videoconference. It will then take another two hours to analyse the data and report.

Policy Development

If you are looking for inspiration for developing policies, have a look at our updated policy set, which we have put on line here.

As part of our consultancy service we can advise on the development of any specific policy relating to a co-operative, social enterprise or community business.

Policy Management

Is there a definitive policy set that is easily accessible to Members? Is version control working properly? Is there an index? Can the policies be traced back to minuted decisions? Which policies are passed by Members and which by Directors? Which policies are overdue for a review?

Policies should be consistent, up to date and subject to regular review, which implies the management function of keeping track of review dates and status for each policy and therefore an index or spreadsheet. Policies have data attached to them (responsible department, implementation date, last review date, review period etc.) and so it helps to put policies into a standard template with this metadata appended to the text of the policy. This is the template that we use.

So, how are your policy management systems? Perhaps we could help improve them or get them set up in the first place. We could, for example:

• Consolidate policy documents into a coherent, definitive set, helping to resolve differences and conflicts
• Check for policy gaps
• Help develop a plan to fill those gaps
• Put policy documents into a standard, agreed template
• Set up an index with version numbers and other metadata recorded
• Set up a review schedule that feeds into the task lists of those with responsibility for policy development.

Our Policy Development Product Area Team Leader is TBA.