How to run an annual internal policy and procedure review with Trello
Set up a process for dealing with your annual internal policy review, and use the Email for Trello Power-Up to send email updates directly from Trello in real time.
Regular policy reviews are important to make sure that your business procedures are legally compliant, serve the needs of your employees, and align with your business goals.
Trello is the perfect platform for a robust annual procedure review that is thorough, transparent, and collaborative. Your whole team has access to the Trello board where you conduct your review, and can track the progress of each individual policy from start to finish.
In this article, we show you how to:
Design an effective annual policy review with Kanban in Trello.
Discuss internal policies with staff, and collaborate on any changes required.
Collect, organize, and analyse the feedback and data related to each policy.
Provide updates via email at the end of the process with Email for Trello.
Your Trello workflow for running an internal policy review
1. Design your policy and procedure review
Start by taking stock of your existing policies and their current status. Set up a Trello card for each policy, so that you can manage action items and team discussion for each one. For example, you can have separate Trello cards for policies like code of conduct, health and safety, leave and time off, remote work, recruitment, and more.
Make the most of built-in Trello features like:
Due dates to set a deadline for each policy review,
Card members to assign the person responsible for making it happen, and
Checklists to add more granular detail to each Trello card. For more inspiration, check out our list of 8 cool things you can do with Trello checklists.
💡 TIP Looking to take your team’s collaboration to the next level? Find out more about how to use Trello for organizing your team’s to-dos.
The Trello interface is based on Kanban – a popular methodology for visualizing your tasks and optimizing your workflow.
A simple example of a Kanban workflow with three lists – To Do, In Progress, and Done
As work progresses, cards move from list to list through each stage of the process. This means that your team can see the progress of each policy review as it moves through the steps in your workflow. For example: Waiting for Review > Stakeholder Engagement > Feedback and implementation > Updates and reporting.
💡 TIP Find out more about how to use Kanban to organize your Trello email inbox and up your team’s productivity.
2. Discuss required policy changes with your team
To get your team’s input on policies under review, send out a feedback form to ask about how the relevant policy has been working for them, and identify any potential pain points.
SendBoard’s Email for Trello Power-Up is an invaluable tool to streamline this process by enabling you to send emails directly from each Trello card.
You can take things a step further by setting up a template email so that every feedback request is standardized. Instead of typing up ad hoc emails – which can lead to omissions and inconsistencies among team members – Email for Trello’s Saved Reply feature makes sure nothing gets overlooked.
Here’s an example email template requesting feedback on a policy:
Dear {%contactFirstname%},
It’s our annual internal review, and we’d like to invite you to give feedback on {%card.name%}.
Please follow the link to the policy feedback form: {%Form_Link%}
If you have any questions, please contact the head of {%Department_Name%} on {%HOD_Email%}.
Kind regards, {%userFirstname%}
💡 TIP Use variables (the parts in curly brackets) to dynamically include relevant information from your Trello card when your email template is sent. Take a look at our help center for a full list of supported SendBoard email variables, with additional instructions on how to reference Trello Custom Fields.
If you need to, you can also engage external stakeholders like legal advisors or compliance consultants via email. All email correspondence remains on the Trello card, right alongside internal discussion like Trello comments, so that everything is accessible in one place.
💡 TIP Got some sensitive information that you don’t want an external collaborator to see (or vice versa)? With Email for Trello’s multiple email thread feature, you can easily select which emails you want to include or exclude from your replies.
3. Collate the feedback received
When you start receiving feedback and suggestions, use the dedicated Trello card for each policy to keep that information organized. For example:
Create Trello Custom Fields to save and display important additional data on your cards, like the name and contact of the head of department, or a link to the latest regulatory guidance. Discover our 4 top tricks for making the most of Trello Custom Fields.
Use Trello checklists to keep track of policy changes that need to be implemented, like ‘revise outdated language’, ‘update formatting’, or ‘send for external approval’.
Add Trello Power-Ups to integrate your team’s favorite tools. For example, adding the Google Drive Power-Up can help centralize document storage on your Trello cards, and make version-control for your policies easier. Find more handy integrations with our ultimate guide to Trello Power-Ups.
💡 TIP Did you know that you can receive and reply to form submissions directly in Trello with Blue Cat Forms and Email for Trello? It’s a useful way to streamline incoming feedback. We also have guides for how to connect common contact forms to Trello, and even how to get Google Forms into Trello with the help of Zapier.
4. Send final updates via email
After each updated policy has been submitted, reviewed, and approved, it’s important to notify employees who contributed feedback, or are affected by changes to the policy.
Once again, you can use a Saved Reply template to streamline this process – and add the power of Trello automation to send the email automatically, based on a custom trigger.
For example, let’s say your policy review team wants to send an email update to contributors when a policy card is dragged into the list ‘Updated’. Here’s how it would work:
Create a new Saved Reply
Create the template email you want to send. In the following example, we use the card checklist variable to draw attention to what’s changed in the new policy, and include a Custom Field variable with a link to the new policy document.
Dear {%contactFirstname%},
Thank you for contributing to our annual internal review. The policy {%card.name%} has now been updated, and we’d like to draw your attention to the following changes:
{%card.checkliststate%}
Please follow the link to view the fully updated policy document: {%Policy_Link%}
Kind regards, {%userFirstname%}
💡 TIP Procedural reviews often involve many stakeholders and contributors. If there is likely to be more than one receipient for your policy update email, you can address multiple people by opening with ‘Dear all’ instead.
Set up a Trello automation rule
To automatically send your template email, set up a Trello automation rule. This consists of two parts:
Trigger: When card is moved into list ‘Updated’
Action: Post comment @reply ##policyupdate
To understand the details of how this automation works, take a look at how to drag a Trello card to send an email.
💡 TIP If you want to send the same update email across all resolved policies in one click (i.e. without having to move each Trello card individually), you can create a Trello button automation to send batch emails to many contacts at once.
Seamlessly review your company policies in Trello
Running an annual policy review can be complex, but Trello and the Email for Trello Power-Up can help your team streamline the process.
With the procedural review for your business in one Trello board, it’s easy to return to the following year, see exactly what changes have happened historically, gather feedback for the next round of changes, and notify contributors of any policy updates. Plus, your team can add due dates for ad hoc reviews if needed, and get reminded of upcoming deadlines, so that nothing slips through the cracks.
