How Standard Operating Procedures Can Benefit Your Business
Lisa Millar
The hidden gem of operational efficiency can be found in creating and documenting standard operating procedures. How often have you found yourself repeatedly trying to figure out how to do a task, mastering it, then forgetting how to do it?
Another example is you are training a new receptionist on how to answer the phone. You speak quickly, they take a few notes, but you notice each time they answer the phone they say something different from the script. Further, your new staff member often transfers calls to the wrong staff members.
Quickly this becomes tiresome, frustrating and wastes your valuable time.
The answer to the problem is setting up Standard Operating Procedures.
SOPs: What Are They and Why Are They Important?
SOPs provide a reference document for how work gets done around here. It saves a company hours in training staff, finding files, meeting deadlines, adhering to industry and regulatory requirements and preparing for strategic planning.
Saved time in a business = saved money + increased revenues
That’s the bottom line. You want productivity to increase and revenues to grow. SOPs are key in putting systems in place.
Why Do SOPs Work?
Measuring Performance and Driving Continuous Improvement
When details are documented, workflow can be evaluated. This helps highlight what is working and what is not. It gives a frame of reference to look at steps in a process to evaluate where a system may be bottlenecked or breaking down.
Facilitating Training and Onboarding
They house a central reference document for the company, usually with organized divisions for each department. For example, training staff on how to do tasks and implement new systems such as a new software payment system, where to file and find files in a database, how to plan the company's annual golf tournament, to how to onboard new employees.
Ensuring Compliance and Reducing Risks
Writing down checklists and steps ensures the details are covered. Depending upon the industry this can be critical for health and safety training, to filing detailed documents on time to prevent paying costly regulatory penalties for noncompliance.
Improving Communication and Collaboration
SOPs shine in project management. Do you use a software system such as Asana or Trello? They are customizable to the workflow at your organization. Before implementing a system or wanting to improve an existing system you need to know your workflow and how you go about meeting deadlines.
Project management is structured around who, what, where, when and how. Knowing how your project manager will instruct staff, set a project plan, and monitor and communicate with team members ensures project quality and meeting milestones and deadlines. What is documented can easily be repeated.
Enhancing Consistency and Quality
Let’s say you design t-shirts for your local brick-and-mortar gift shop. You have had so many orders coming in, you don’t know how you will keep up. You have been the designer, marketer, salesperson, bookkeeper, supply and inventory manager. It is time to hire help. Start by writing down what you do and how you do it in your business. This is the foundation for training staff to be able to duplicate what you do to ensure quality, service and products are consistent with what you have done and your clients love.
Boosting Efficiency and Productivity
When staff know what their roles and responsibilities are and how to do their work, it is much easier for them to get to work. Identifying steps and measurable action steps makes it easier for management to monitor the work staff members are producing.
Think back to when you started a new job in the past - if you felt unsure or vague about what to do, a lot of time was wasted trying to figure it out and fixing mistakes. It wouldn’t have been very motivating either.
Consider another job, where you knew exactly what your role was, how to do tasks, who to ask for help and what the deadlines were. I’ll bet you were far more efficient and productive. SOPs create those guidelines for each role in a company.
In Conclusion
What gets documented and followed brings consistency, a methodology, easier communication for collaboration, reduced company risks, and streamlined and improved operations. SOPs are simply a document that outlines the steps of how work gets done at your company. It can be a simple list to detailed pages of documentation. Each company is unique and the need for customized SOPs is evident.
Have you been thinking about writing and documenting SOPs for your company, but haven’t had the time to get it done?
Click the link below and we can meet to talk about tips on how to get you started.