Sustainability & Risk / Compliance / Objectives

Compliance Program Managers Managing Compliance Documentation

Objective

As a Compliance Program Manager, you need to track, organize, and manage a large volume of many different types of documents related to compliance activity. These documents are required primarily to successfully pass regulatory audits, and to reduce liability risk by providing documentation in the event of litigation due to an accident or health-related incident where compliance comes into question. Documents might be related to specific compliance regulations, initiatives, programs, requirements, or locations, such as the results of an elevator inspection at a specific building. However, in some cases, documents might also be generic documents, such as general procedures, best practices, audit checklists, and compliance vendor documents, that do not apply to a single record.

Compliance Program Managers need to be able to upload and quickly locate all of these documents when needed for review or audits.

Solution

In order to deal with uploading, finding, and viewing all compliance documents most efficiently, the Manage Document Library view offers a consolidated method for managing all documents in one place. From this view, you are able to view both documents that have been added for compliance records, and more generally applicable documents that have been added to the Document Library.

Procedures

Business Process Owner Sets Up a Folder Structure and Search Categories for Organizing Documents within the Library

To organize Compliance documents for easy retrieval, many sites set up a folder structure so that users can drill down to the appropriate folder when adding documents to the library, or when locating documents to review them. Sites may also want to set up a system of categories and types so that users can classify their documents when adding them to the library, such as categorizing them by permits, procedures, violations, and accidents. Setting up this organizational structure is optional, but well worth the effort for sites that have an extensive library of compliance documents and would therefore benefit from having a defined structure for adding and retrieving documents.

  1. Run the Compliance Define Document Library Folders task to define a folder hierarchy for storing compliance-related documents within the library. You can develop as many levels in the hierarchy as your site requires.
  2. Run the Compliance Define Document Categories and Types task to define a system for categorizing your compliance-related documents.

Compliance Program Managers Upload Documents

Compliance Program Managers can add compliance documents to the Document Library in the following ways:

  1. Add documents when working with specific compliance records : Add a document for a compliance record by accessing one of the following tasks. The task you select depends on the compliance item for which you are adding the document.
    • Manage Regulations and Initiatives
    • Manage Compliance Programs
    • Manage Compliance Requirements
    • Manage Compliance Locations
    • Manage All Compliance Events
    • Manage Missed and Overdue Events

    When you add a document for a compliance record, you can also associate the document with a Document Folder, or with a Document Category and Type to facilitate locating it.

    See Adding Document to Compliance Records .

  2. Add a document using the Manage Document Library task : When you add a document to the Document Library , you have the options of adding it to a specific compliance record, selecting a Document Folder, or adding a Document Category and Type to the document to facilitate locating it.

Locate and view documents

  1. Locate documents : After adding documents, you can locate them using the Filter console and the search criteria your Business Process Owner for Compliance has developed (Document Folder, Document Category, or Document Type.) See Using the Filter Console for the Manage Document Library Task .
  2. Review documents :You can use the document management system to open documents and review them. See Viewing Documents .

Editing Document Information

You can edit information for the document and can check in a new version if needed. See Editing Document Information .

Adding New Documents

When adding new documents, to facilitate locating a document, you can add a compliance document to a Document Folder that your Business Process Owner has defined. You can also assign a Document Category and Type to the document to facilitate locating it. Additionally, if applicable, you can associate the document with a specific compliance regulation, program, requirement, event, or location. See Adding Compliance Documents .