10 Reasons Your Business Needs SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)

What If Something Happens to YOU?

Will the person(s) stepping in to run your business in your absence know what to do?

“A Standard Operating Procedure is a document which describes the regularly recurring operations relevant to the quality of the investigation. The purpose of a SOP is to carry out the operations correctly and always in the same manner.” – Wikpedia

What tasks do you need to do?  Who needs to do them?  What are the best ways to approach these tasks?  If you already have tasks set up, what are the steps to complete them and who does the work?

These questions can be answered by systematizing your business.  SOPs are what smart businesses use to create consistency in how processes and tasks are performed.  They consist of clearly documented, step-by-step procedures and checklists that are easy for staff members to follow and greatly reduce the chances of mistakes

Still wondering why you need SOPs?

Here are 10 of the many reasons why:

1. 1. Provides quality control and consistency
      With SOPs in place your business will run smoothly no matter who is doing the work and everything will be done the way you want it done.  No guess work or tons of questions for you to answer.

 

• Helps increase productivity
  These SOPs save time as everyone completing the tasks in your business knows what is expected of them and saves you the time of reminding them what needs to be done daily.

 

 

• Gives motivation for the staff to do things RIGHT
  These procedures outline why someone is doing something and the steps on how to do it.  Giving your staff members the reasons behind the tasks and why they should be performed in certain steps motivates them to do it right.

 

 

• Empowers cross training
  You may have only a few staff members or even just one but having SOPs in place will effectively give you the ability to hand off tasks to someone else without spending time to train them.

 

 

• Ensures that clients always get the best possible experience from you
  Having a standard way of interacting with all clients in the same manner no matter what the interaction is about gives you the opportunity to provide the best client service.  Nothing will be forgotten.

 

 

• Prepares you for future growth
  Imagine your business grows big and grows fast.  You will be crazy busy and will probably bring on many new staff members, right?  Having SOPs in place will make growth seamless from an operating stand point and new ones can be added as you add new services and products.

 

 

• Simplifies performance management
  When all staff follow the same processes, it’s very easy to measure them against those standards giving you the ability to fairly appraise performance.  

 

 

•  Protects you from loss
  Documentation of task processes saves you from disasters and work stoppage when staff members that have all this information stored in their heads, walk out on you, get sick or retire without writing everything down for you.

 

 

• Acts as historical records of the how, why and when in an existing process, so there is a factual basis for revising those steps when a process or product changes.   
  As your staff members change, unwritten knowledge and skills can disappear leaving those that come not knowing precisely what to do.  By properly maintaining and updating your SOPs new people will have the latest and best information to complete tasks they are responsible for.

 

 

• Improved Staff Retention
  Well written SOPs will make sure all task get done as they will provide backups for each task for when staff members are on vacation, out sick, or are pulled to another task.

 

Creating a strong SOP manual requires strong common sense, logic, and understanding of each job function and teamwork.  Ongoing communication with all staff members is key to make sure the SOPs work correctly and update them as needed.  It is very important for your team to speak up when a problem arises and a process does not work right and make it your mission to solve their problems.  

Having well written SOPs will let you do the things you like and do best as a business owner and you won’t have to worry about the daily tasks your staff is performing.

If you don’t have SOPs for your business yet, or need them updated, let’s chat and my team can get that fixed for you!   Schedule a time convenient for you and let’s get this done!

I hope you enjoyed this post.  Please leave a comment below to help others.  If you think someone you know may find value in this post, please share it.

Thanks,

Danna
The Wolf Woman Entrepreneur

Alpha One Innovations
http://alphaoneinnovations.com