Standard operating procedures; boring but essential if you have a team
Standard operation procedures or SOP’s, are not the most exciting topic or task to complete.
However, if you have a team or are looking to build a team in the future, and would like them to be a well-oiled, efficient team, you need to have these in place.
SOP’s are how you do a particular task, in their basic form they are written or video procedures. They provide clarity for everybody about who needs to do what piece of each process, how it's done, why it's done. and when it's done.
And the clarity this will give your team will lead to increased productivity and ensure tasks are completed the way that you want, to the standard you set. They also lead to a reduction in questions your team need to ask, and they reduce confusion about what comes next or who does what.
Documenting SOPS means your team will have increased self-sufficiency
Save them in a central location or in your PM tool like ASANA or ClickUP, where anybody within your team can easily find them. If anybody is on holiday, off sick or leaves your team, it means somebody else can easily and quickly pick up the work because they can find the SOP and work out what needs to be done, how, and when.
SOPS work particularly well on tasks that are repeated or tasks that have multiple handoffs to different team members.
So for example, you might create a video that then needs to pass to a number of different team members at different stages to be edited, edited, turned into a blog and then turned into social media posts. You may need a videographer, copywriter and VA to work on this task. If you have an SOP in place, then it is very clear about who does what, when, how and they can see who comes before them, who comes after them, who they need to ask questions about.
It also means that when you're bringing somebody new into your business you could give them the SOPs and they can see how things are done within your business quickly and easily and you're not having to double pay somebody to sit with them and show them how to go through each task.
They can read through and be self-sufficient and do it themselves.
There are lots of different ways you can prepare SOPs
The way you choose should be based upon your team and how you work best.
Written procedures
Video procedures, although this comes with a warning. Don’t create videos too long because when you have a change in procedure, you’ll have to re-record the whole thing!
A combination of written and video
A process flow on a tool like Miro
A series of screenshots
Whatever way you choose to do it, make sure that it's really clear about what the tasks are, how they're done, and who does them.
Whatever way you chose, make sure it is simple and repeatable and that the instructions are easy to follow. You can get someone to test them to make sure everything is included.
Make sure SOP’s are easy to find
Once you have created them, it’s really important they are stored centrally. Keep them in your project management tool or G-drive or Office 365. This makes them really easy to find if people leave or you have new people coming on board. Everything is at people's fingertips.
It reduces friction, reduces questions and means that your team is working more efficiently.
Make creating SOPs part of your ways of working
Get your team to create and tweak them whilst they are working on the tasks. You don’t need to set a huge amount of time aside. It can be an ongoing project to slowly pull them all together. It is helpful, and more likely to work if you make it one team members responsibility to co-ordinate the project and making sure that they are being created and stored in the right place.
When we're working virtually and as an online business, we need to try and find whatever way that we can to make sure that team members can work as easily and frictionlessly as possible. Creating SOPs is one way to help with this.
So, if you haven't started doing them, this is your week, start from now!
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