Transparency is one of the most important parts of good governance in the modern workplace. Access to information about the actions and processes of your organisation should be open and clear.

Why is Transparency Important?

First and foremost, it is the law for organisations in this country to ensure they handle personal data with transparency. According to the GDPR, personal data should be ‘processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject (‘lawfulness, fairness, and transparency’).

But transparency is not just a question of the law. It can also have tangible benefits for the way your organisation operates.

What Are The Benefits of Transparent Governance?

Transparent, open governance can improve your governance and ensure that every part of the organisation is working as it should.

• Security

One of the most important parts of transparency is ensuring you have strong security. Having a secure system isn’t just about investing in the highest standard of encryption (although this is important!), it’s also about the day-to-day processes which take place in the organisation.

Think about it: you wouldn’t invest in the best home security and then hand out keys to everyone you know. Why would you do this with your organisation’s confidential data? No one in the company should have access to data they don’t need. 

With tools like granular access controls, user profiles can be created to maintain a clear record of everyone who accesses the data. Administrators can then easily view and manage permissions and user licenses. This will improve your internal governance in the long run.

• Efficiency

Alongside security, transparency can support your internal processes more widely. Administration is no simple task and it won’t get any easier if you’re unable to effectively assess efficiency. Transparent governance provides you the tools to make informed decisions about the future of the company.

If you are only finding out about issues at the last moment, you will not have time to course-correct.

• Audit Trails

A comprehensive audit trail allows your organisation to implement effective measures when things go wrong. They are an essential part of governance that should not be sidelined in your administrative processes. Simply put, transparency is at the heart of a good audit trail.

There is no point to documenting actions if you can’t be sure you’ve noted the most important parts. As you move from meeting resolutions to actions, you want to create a clear line of development. The access features in Convene’s Document Library will improve your ability to keep track of information and manage your progress.

• Company Culture 

As well as all the points we’ve already mentioned, promoting a company culture which relies on trust will improve the relationship between your organisation and your employees. If you maintain transparent governance, they will not feel they have to hide things.

Encourage your staff to feel at home in the workplace and you will reap the results. Fluent communication is always a benefit for company culture.

How Can Convene Improve Transparency Within Your Organisation?

Convene is an award-winning Board Portal, designed to improve your meeting management at every stage of the process. We believe administrators should have full autonomy over user management to ensure transparency. 

Our software is now available as a Microsoft Teams integration which means you can switch seamlessly between the features offered by both.

With Convene, user profiles can be created by the administrator with names, email addresses and system roles through the administrative portal. Additional fields for phone numbers and other details may also be added.

Once created, Convene allows administrators to easily view and manage permissions and licences allocated to users using the Convene web portal. Convene allows user accounts to be disabled and reassigned, giving greater flexibility. This licence is available for immediate re-use.

Committees and groups can be defined in order to manage many individuals with a single click, saving you precious time. Users can be added or removed from a committee either through the groups tab or through the individual user account. This means that an administrator can add a user to the accounts menu and then add that user to the appropriate committees through a single interface.

Administrators can choose to allow access at the level of entire meetings or folders; or they can choose to restrict access to individual agenda topics or files. On top of permissions control for meetings, Convene supports permissions control for documents in the built-in Document Library.

If you’d like to learn more about how Convene can help your organisation achieve better governance, don’t hesitate to book a free demo today!