Capturing your processes ready for documentation…
Now you have your business in order and organised, so it is scalable, and you have thought about how you are going to manage your teams, so they are performing their best, it is time to think about how you are going to write your procedures.
The first task is to put together a broad plan what it is you are going to document.
Step 1 for us is usually to focus on the areas where consistent performance is essential – that is the work your delivery teams do with your customers.
With massage therapists, this will be giving the massage.
With retail outlets it will be the way outlets are managed and customers are looked after.
Actually, customer service is usually at the top of the list – getting the way your customers are looked after consistently to your high standards is usually a priority for most business owners and the most difficult thing to manage well. Good procedures can help here every time.
So, having put a list together of the issues you most want to deal with, the question is – how do I start?
Step 2 then is to capture these procedures.
You, the business owner, are the worst person to do this task…
You are not usually involved in most of these tasks on a day-to-day basis.
And even if you are, tasks such as these which are important, are not usually urgent.
So, delegate it to your teams.
- Give one person with the ability to manage this job the responsibility, time, and funding to get it done.
- Give that person your endorsement to work with your teams to organise collection of the procedures.
- Then the teams doing each task will become responsible for capture.
The way the details are captured then depends on what is required – yes, I know – how long is a piece of string.
Video is the very best for most tasks – either just using your phone for physical tasks or screen capture using something like Zoom or Loom for online tasks.
When videoing physical tasks – say how to change the roll on the EFTPOS machine, make sure you video so you capture the detail of the buttons to be pressed.
Also, when videoing online or physical tasks talk – describing the steps in short action points.
This video will be used to document the task later and it will be used for training and by those of us who prefer video when learning about a job.
Just go through each tasks until you are done…
