Introduction
Have you ever wondered why your business consistently fails to earn an enormous profit? It is because the desire to keep a proper workflow is failing. The lack of having an SOP impacts any business organization quite poorly, and this time, it could be yours!
Having SOP adherence is a primary function that you need to consider in your business. From a smooth workflow for your employees to detailed customer relations, SOP adherence is everything. Below is a detailed guide on 5 Key Ways to ensure compliance with SOP Adherence which you must follow!
What is SOP?
A standard operating procedure (SOP) is a set of instructions that explains how to perform a task or activity. They're in-depth guides that leave almost no room for ambiguity, and can anyone follow them to get the job done.
Most people create SOPs to handle their business with development, finance, legal affairs, operations, etc. By creating one, you have a powerful but straightforward framework. If you are possibly ready to leave, you can hand over the SOP that is self-explainable.
Advantages of SOPs
The positive change
Having the proper SOP in action promotes smooth operation. A number of employees may get confused without having an adequate plan and a setup. If you want everything runs smoothly in your organization, you need to have the proper framework.
The right SOPs can help in promoting the employees to complete work faster.
Improved employee training and engagement
With SOPs, you can make hiring and retaining employees a lot easier. New employees can use SOP to learn about the workflows of your organization. They can understand the right procedure and steps to follow to finish the job.
This will encourage employees to self-educate themselves regarding the company's regulations. And it will remove the pressure off of you. You will be able to focus on other pressing matters of training and development.
Finds the missing pieces
Once you start documenting your procedures step-by-step, you'd be surprised how many problems you can solve by it. You can easily spot gaps in your processes as you're writing the guidelines.
You may find that you're missing an essential step in the employee's onboarding procedure that could improve clarity and operating procedure. Writing things down can help you in joining those missing pieces.
Standardize customer service
Let's say someone just filed a complaint about your product or services. But are you aware of the exact procedure for resolving it? Organizations without SOPs can find their customer service lacking when they need to solve a problem.
Without a concrete procedure, there are chances that the customer service requests are easily lost. Having an SOP for customer service can shed light on these critical inquiries you might miss.
Compliance
The following key thing that you need to focus on is the compliance of the consumer. As a brand, complying with rules and regulations is extremely crucial. Well-written SOPs ensure regulations are satisfied. When we say regulations, we mean both internal and external. For example, if an employee wants to file the expense sheet for the month, there has to be a defined process.
When it comes to government regulations, if you fail to write and create proper SOPs, it will send a signal to the government regulators about your noncompliance.
5 Ways to maximize SOP Adherence across your Organization
1. Train employees around the SOPs
When it comes to understanding SOPs, employees need more than mere reading skills. They need practical training around SOPs. You need to target the learners and feature interactive, hands-on learning opportunities.
They need to learn the importance of every SOP and how it will help them complete their tasks.
2. Make SOPs easily accessible.
Employees need to remember and follow your SOPs.For that, they need to be clearly visible. To make sure that it's easily accessible by your staff, you can create posters, post on other communication tools, or add to your common channel for communicating with them.
You can also create an online library for all the SOP documentation with a table of contents that allows employees to find an SOP whenever they feel like it.
3. Track the results from SOPs
You need to track the results of every new strategy you're implementing for your business. The same goes for compliance with SOPs. Encourage your employees to comply with SOPs.
For example, incorporating compliance with SOPs as part of the employee onboarding process makes them more likely to understand the procedure better and follow them.
Tracking their usage will help you incorporate their feedback and improve the SOPs.
4. Keep your SOPs updated
Naturally, your processes and products change constantly. You need to have a process for redistributing and updating your SOP documentation.
You might think of this as additional work to edit and replace repeatedly. But not doing it can result in an outdated process and wrong results.
Determine a particular time interval like every monthly or bi-monthly to update it. Ensure employees know that SOPs are regularly updated at some time interval.
5. Integrate SOP compliance among your employees
Motivate your employees to adopt SOPs and embrace habits to implement them with consistent execution. Make it easy for employees to provide feedback whenever they feel that something can be done better.
And when you receive a piece of feedback, review and implement it accordingly. Learn to invest your employees in creating and executing SOPs better. This will help you increase a sense of teamwork, which benefits everyone in the company.
6. Using Scribe to smoothen the procedure
Scribe is a tool that'll help you speed up the creation process for the SOP manual. You can use it to create your complete manual or take the individual screenshots and add them to your specific software for the SOP manual.
And you guessed it...we made a Scribe to show you how!
You can either merge a few scribes, add timestamps, and switch the toggl on for team or public comments from the side panel. To share the Scribe click on ‘Share.’ It will generate a pop up and either you can send it to the designated email ids or you can copy the link and send it individually.
And then all that's left is to click "Done."
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Keep Compliant with SOPs
The reason for creating a standard operating procedure is to give step-by-step directions on the most proficient method to finish tasks reliably. If appropriately managed, SOPs can help you achieve optimum employee productivity and the organization’s goals in numerous ways. We can help you minimize your time and effort in creating the SOPs.
Scribe is a tool that can help you create better SOPs in less time. Sign up for Scribe for free!
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