You have worked hard to document your processes and now it is time to get your staff to use them. In this article, I will show you how to prepare and implement your Standard Operating Procedures with your team.
Prepare the Data
The first thing to do is double-check the documentation for accuracy. It is possible that some of it is old and out of date, especially if it has taken you a while to get everything documented. You will want to review everything beforehand so that your team has the most up-to-date information.
The next thing you need to think about is who needs to have access to edit, view, or comment. You do not want everyone on the team to have access to all of the information, because that puts you at a liability, but you do want to make sure that the right people can view it and the right people can edit the parts they are responsible for.
The final part of preparing the data is to make sure that it is well organized and that your team can find the information that they are going to be looking for.
Make a Plan for Ongoing Maintenance
Once you have prepared your data, but before you roll it out to your team, I recommend that you take a break and think about how you are going to maintain this information. Over time, you have done so much work to get it written, documented, and put together, we want to make sure that it continues to be an accurate and living and breathing document.
I recommend that you assign an owner for each one of your processes. That person will be responsible for reviewing the processes they are responsible for regularly, and making updates as needed.
Roll Your SOPs Out to Your Team
I recommend that you roll out the SOPs in a big team meeting and talk about why you are doing it and how it is going to impact and make their lives better. Assign a date for when they need to have completed reviewing everything that they have access to. Also, assign a manager to follow up with them at regular intervals.
It is a good idea to have someone who is dedicated to SOP implementation when you first roll them out. That person should check in with employees regularly to ensure they have read through the information and to find out if they have feedback or questions.
Make Sure Your Team is Using the SOPs
There are a couple of tricks to get everyone on the team to use the SOPs. One trick is that anytime anybody comes to you with a question, always refer them back to the Standard Operating Procedures. You can say, “That’s a great question, did you check your Standard Operating Procedures?” After saying that a few times (or a few dozen times) people will know that they are expected to review those Standard Operating Procedures, instead of coming to you all of the time.
The next thing you want to do is encourage everyone on your team to bookmark the Standard Operating Procedures. Encourage them to have that up as a tool on their desktop that they use every day, and make sure that they know that their Standard Operating Procedures are going to be one of the main basis for their performance reviews.
If you are wondering how to get started with Standard Operating Procedures or how to get them organized, that is something I would love to help you with.
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