Hello!

This is my first time here at this forum.
I work in a company in Brazil. We have about 900 employees in our site and we have our own EDMS. We have all documents available in our intranet and we distribute the revised and new documents through and automatic email to departments related to that document.

For example: There is a new document of department A. So, we put the document in the intranet, see which departments are related to it and send an automatic email to the departments telling about the release of the new document.

The problem is that we have a lot of documents. Sometimes we send about 30 automatic emails every day. So, people just don’t read the email and throw it away, not getting an important information.
So, I was thinking to divide all the documents in areas. Documents for managers, supervisors, workers, for example, and then distribute them in a specific way for each area. For example: email for managers, power point presentation for supervisors and training or something else for workers. By doing that, we will distribute the information to the right person.

But I’m not quite sure how to do that. Do you have any ideas or experience you can share?
Thank you.

Welcome to The Cove! :bigwave:

I agree that a scattershot approach to document distribution will probably result in notification fatigue - and the effects of it as you have described.

Our notification system is set to assign emails to people who are within the document's scope, as well as others (like myself) who have an interest in learning what is getting updated.

I don't normally read all the updates either, because another QA person is on the approval list and I trust his judgment. As auditor, my main interest is in completed actions to close corrective actions. The information of what's new in the processes is generally delivered in a different way than telling people a new or revised process document is out. For example, through operations meetings and engineering meetings. This tends to allow more discussion of what-where-why than reading a process document.

I hope this helps!

Welcome...!

If the only true controlled copies are on the computer and people do not print them off and stick them on the work space then you really don't need them to acknowledge the change except for a training reason.

HOWEVER, informing them of the changes is important; but if they read the document everytime they do the work they are infact following the correct version. It's a tricky method; using the computers, because people will think the know the instruction because they have read it a hundred times; but the minute it changes and they do not read it - thats when work gets scrapped.

Could the large number of e-mails a day be replaced by one e-mail that lists all fo them out by department or activity? Could you require acknowledgement that they have been reviewed?

Thank you, Jennifer and Tom. :thanx:

I have just a few questions.

Jennifer: I liked the idea to talk about it in operations meeting.
In our company, we classify the documents by department and notify someone at the department. So, it's up to them to notify their staff. My question is how to define a list of people inside the document's scope? What we want to do is notify the right person. Could you help on that?

Tom: Thanks for the tips. I can get the acknowledgement of reviewed documents, so I think a list for each department is good idea. But how can I make sure they read the document and know the important information? Questionnaires? Training? Audits?

Thank you for your help.
:bigwave:

But how can I make sure they read the document and know the important information? Questionnaires? Training? Audits?
:bigwave:

Well, that's the big question. It comes down to accountability for the people that are suppose to read them. If you issue them, communicate the changes to them, and they still do not pay attention it's time to get the management involved. Culture sets the tone for the organization, and if they can't do the simple tasks of reading a revised instruction, then what else are they not doing...?

I will be posting a article in my blog in the next day or two about my thoughts on accountability...you should check it out and see if any of it helps.

It's the constant quality system challange.

Hi,
Welcome to the Cove!
In our end, new or revised document is being routed to all Managers which happens to be out Authorized Approving Authority. The we have our First Level of Orientation: Orientation of changes shall involve the originator and the affected department supervisor/s or his/her designate. Second Level Orientation: The respective department supervisor or his/her designate shall then be responsible to disseminate the information to all affected personnel in his/her department.
As regards to your problem, you can create a system that the automatic emails will be sent to all Supervisors for them to cascade the said changes or new documentto their respective subordinates.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Raffy
Hello!

This is my first time here at this forum.
I work in a company in Brazil. We have about 900 employees in our site and we have our own EDMS. We have all documents available in our intranet and we distribute the revised and new documents through and automatic email to departments related to that document.

For example: There is a new document of department A. So, we put the document in the intranet, see which departments are related to it and send an automatic email to the departments telling about the release of the new document.

The problem is that we have a lot of documents. Sometimes we send about 30 automatic emails every day. So, people just don’t read the email and throw it away, not getting an important information.
So, I was thinking to divide all the documents in areas. Documents for managers, supervisors, workers, for example, and then distribute them in a specific way for each area. For example: email for managers, power point presentation for supervisors and training or something else for workers. By doing that, we will distribute the information to the right person.

But I’m not quite sure how to do that. Do you have any ideas or experience you can share?
Thank you.