Introduction
When you document your team’s tasks, you standardize the methods they should use to complete those processes efficiently. As a result, you remove a lot of the guesswork and inconsistencies that can crop up when employees are left to muddle through workflows on their own.
Documenting a process involves a few steps, including identifying your audience, assembling helpful tools and drafting instructions. It helps to have a sample process document to follow, so in this article, we’ll share a few examples and tips to inspire your business process management projects.
What’s Process Documentation?
Process documentation refers to resources that outline the tasks necessary to complete a business task. These step-by-step instructions define the workflow without room for confusing ambiguity or time-consuming guesswork. As a result, employees clearly understand the steps involved in each project so they can work accordingly.
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3 Benefits of Having Process Documentation
When you write comprehensive process documentation, you’ll experience these impactful benefits.
1. Standardized Outcomes
Documenting processes improves employees’ workflow management by showing them exactly how to complete tasks. This clarity also helps workers meet company expectations and comply with industry standards.
For instance, financial institutions need a consistent way to verify check authenticity. Process documentation can outline steps on how to use software to detect forgeries. When teams follow these instructions, they’re more likely to prevent fraudulent transactions.
2. Reduced Errors
A well-documented process offers guidance about when and where to check for errors. By calling attention to these moments, you remind employees to review their work at crucial times.
Say you’re designing an SOP for publishing a monthly audit. Before accountants share their final financial statements, you’d add a step asking them to double-check it. Team members should cross-check figures, compare account balances and test for formula errors. These steps ensure the team won’t introduce mistakes into the audit they’d need to go back and fix later.
3. Increased Automation
Automation is a powerful tool that can handle repetitive, tedious tasks. And while documenting a process, you can find tasks that would benefit from automation.
For example, if you have a process for writing guides, it likely involves a step that says, “Test the workflow and describe it step-by-step with screenshots.” That’s an opportunity for automated tools like Scribe to improve the process. Rather than having employees manually outline each task, use our software to capture screenshots and generate instructions automatically.
How To Create Process Documentation: 5 Steps
If you’re ready to write process documentation for your team, follow this step-by-step guide.
1. Choose Process Documentation Tools
Your first step is to assemble the tools you’ll use to explain the task, such as:
- A platform like Confluence or SharePoint where you’ll publish your process documentation so users can securely access it.
- A template that offers headings and categories that work well for the workflow you’re documenting. Browse Scribe’s process documentation templates or another online library to find one that suits your needs.
- AI tools like Scribe that streamline the documentation process by automating time-consuming tasks.
- Flowchart tools like Lucidchart and Miro that can help you create helpful diagrams to visualize your processes.
Do thorough research before choosing these programs, as picking the right software makes a big difference. For example, Coronis Health, a revenue management company, struggled with poor compliance due to discrepancies in their manually documented processes. After using Scribe to improve their internal guides, the company increased compliance to 98%.
2. Define Your Audience
Before you write anything, consider who your audience is. This understanding helps you select an appropriate tone and writing style.
To narrow down your audience, ask yourself the following questions:
- Who am I writing this for?
- What do they need to know?
- What do they already know?
- How complicated is this business process?
- Are there relevant policies or compliance requirements to document?
- Is there more than one acceptable way to complete this workflow?
Use your answers to draft your document’s introduction and outline. This is an excellent place to experiment with writing to your selected audience because you’re summarizing the process for them and yourself. While you’re at it, list any requirements readers should meet before beginning the process.
3. Write Step-By-Step Instructions
Describe the main steps readers must take to complete the process. For tasks with multiple phases, create clear headings for each and fill in the steps with detailed instructions. If you’re using Scribe, simply turn on the browser extension and walk through the process yourself. Our software will automatically generate instructions for you.
4. Add Resources
Review your instructions to find opportunities to add links to helpful resources readers need to complete the process. Consider including details like brand guidelines, compliance regulations and training videos.
Another valuable tool you can create is an FAQ guide employees can reference as they complete a task. With this additional information at their disposal, staff members won’t need to waste time seeking clarification as they work.
5. Test and Share Your Guide
Ask someone who hasn’t completed the process you’re documenting to try to use your guide. Encourage them to take notes or record their session and invite them to be open with feedback. Based on their comments, you can rearrange steps, fix confusing instructions or add additional resources.
After updating the instructions, test them with a new employee to see if you fixed the issues. And as soon as your documentation gets through testing with acceptable results, it’s ready to distribute. Add the new resource to your SOP manual so all employees can access it immediately.
3 Business Process Documentation Examples
Here are three templates you can use in your next process documentation project.
1. Onboarding Checklist Template
The onboarding process can be turbulent for new employees and their trainers, as both have many tasks to complete. For instance, team members have to obtain licenses, requisition hardware and register accounts. All these assignments pile up quickly, so capturing them in a process document ensures that none slip through the cracks.
This Onboarding Checklist outlines all the steps new employees must complete before beginning their training, such as:
- Legal: A list of all the contracts and agreements a new employee must sign.
- Finance: Details about how to sign up for payroll, invoicing or accounting software.
- Communication: Instructions on creating accounts for collaboration platforms like instant messaging and email.
2. Training Manual Template
A training manual outlines how to bring new employees up to speed with the team’s operations. Trainers can follow this organizational plan to ensure they’re teaching new employees everything they need to know. Without a training manual, the onboarding process quickly becomes inconsistent and incomplete, leading to a steeper learning curve and more mistakes.
This Training Manual template outlines many sections, including:
- Introduction: A statement of the manual’s purpose and an overview of the training program.
- Pre-training preparation: Prerequisites that new employees must meet before beginning the training program.
- Training sessions: A detailed process map of all the onboarding modules new employees will complete, along with their learning activities and assessment methods.
- Post-training evaluation: Information on how to ask participants for their honest opinions on the training sessions.
- Appendices and references: Sections where trainers can place resources like diagrams and additional documents that might help new employees complete their training.
3. Project Handover Template
A project handover occurs when an assignment changes hands between employees, leaders or entire departments. Getting that hand-off right gives recipients the best chance at seamlessly stepping in to finish the project properly.
This Project Handover template reduces the risk of miscommunication between team members by outlining the following sections:
- Summary: Space for a detailed synopsis covering the project’s goals, risks and assumptions.
- Roles: A roster of the stakeholders involved, including their titles and assignments.
- Tasks: A process map of all the tasks people must execute to complete the project, broken up by phases.
- Training: Resources everyone will need to complete their tasks, including training videos, assets and SOPs.
Standardize Workflows With Scribe
Documenting your processes — and keeping those documents updated — offers invaluable benefits like improved consistency and legal compliance. Outlining each task takes an initial investment of time and effort, but tools like templates, flowchart creators and software like Scribe can streamline the process.
Scribe automatically captures screenshots and generates instructions as you complete a process, creating instantly usable guides. Our platform also supports a long list of integrations that let you embed Scribes into your preferred content management system.
To begin a documentation project, check out Scribe’s Process Generator tool.
