What’s the common thread in successful organizations? They all have the inherent challenge of maintaining consistency in their company for both onboarding new employees as well as following proven business processes to achieve long-term growth.
How can this challenge be met?
The benefits of SOPs
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) create consistency with job performance, increase quality, and demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) in terms of measured revenue and retention from their efforts to collect company procedures and policies and put them in one centralized pipeline for results.
- Organize employee training and skill assessment strategies for critical job positions and role
- Collaborate among department management to focus workflows and sales initiatives
- Onboard new hires beyond orientation to create leaders from within
- Build a “world class” organization with efficient delivery to stand out in the industry
- Add value to customers and create assets from workers focused on company objectives
Tools you can use
In robust businesses and organizations, one way to avoid duplicated efforts and miscommunication, is to have effective tools within reach and train everyone how to use them. One sop template tool I recommend is Flowster. My company’s been using it for about 4 months now and it’s really helped optimize our SOP management.
Procedures that guide workers through the operations of the company allow workers at every level within an organization know how to effectively achieve their job goals and support the company’s overall growth strategy.
Standardized operating procedures outline direction from the top down for the company. It helps deliver quality with checklists, outlines, and organizational charts to speed workflow and daily operations. At each marker, predetermined markers to measure ROI can be scheduled for weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews to streamline what works and reduce anything else.
Standards
Consistency is key to growth. Packaging standard operating procedures that are simple, clear, and easy to implement encourages workers to be at their best. It also helps the organization deliver quality with a knowledgeable staff. Designing SOPs that are consistent and replicated in delivery of a product or service for a business increases growth of a company.
Operations
Part of that consistency is housing the operation’s design in one place with one primary contact to delegate updates and make sure everyone has their own copy to keep as a handy resource. This source document can act as a workbook that streamlines the company’s mission with a working understanding of everyone’s part and participation in it with results.
Understanding job descriptions, department work flows, employment policies, training needs, and skills required for each role in the organization increases communication across management and organizational tiers. Job satisfaction adds value to the organization with productive workers and increased ROI.
With clear direction, employees, managers, staff, and teams collaborate on company objectives with step-by-step guidelines and expectations to grow professionally, build the company’s risk management profile, and can create new recognition for best practices in the industries they serve.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
No policy or procedure is complete without evaluating it against the company’s active practices by workers and departments. Any gaps between the policies and the way day-to-day operations occur need a bridge to keep workflow moving forward.
Workers do what works. Align policies to reflect best practices industry-wide and what works within in company workflow and management for greater impact and real results.
With one contact for SOP updates, regular performance reviews can track individual goals and company objectives for growth. This also contributes to the effectiveness of SOPs that propel the company with greater job satisfaction and better performance quality, protecting company and worker interests, and reducing liabilities.
An additional value of internal SOP collaboration creates a company culture based on professional development skills acquisition. The pipeline of leaders grown from within the organization has far-reaching impacts on the increase of revenue and the longevity of innovation in a dynamic, changing, digital landscape.
Beyond Busy
Growth of any organization determines its ability to provide value to customers that consume its products and services available and those served internally that also determine business success.
Standardized guidelines for productivity, quality, safety, and department workflow protects the company’s best assets (individuals) that drive company objectives through focused activity for greater customer value and return of efforts gained by the SOPs to ensure all working operations are performed correctly and at the highest quality. Technology keeps it in real-time with cloud-based tools to share updates as they come along.
It’s a time crunch at the beginning of the collaborative process to outline or generate SOP templates but it allows more time to fully invest in long term scalability campaigns with the added efficiency. Saved time increases momentum and reduces loss.
