Humans are built to absorb information in a variety of ways — it’s totally normal to have a completely different learning style from your peers. 

And if you own a business, that means some employees will learn a process with a few verbal instructions.

But then there are those team members that need an extra bit of hand-holding and reassurance via email every hour. You know the ones. 

And let’s be honest — you probably have a few that fit that mold.

Sit back for a moment and imagine what it would be like if every task in your company was completed the same way, by every employee, every time. (Relax — we’re not referencing some dystopian factory of human automatons.)

This vision can become a reality if you create a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for your team.

SOPs are a set of clearly written step-by-step instructions for a specific, complex routine business task. They help your employees take the guesswork out of the equation by breaking down how to perform a task with instructions on what to do and how to do it. 

Not sure if you want to invest the time and energy into creating a set of SOPs? Here are six benefits of capturing this knowledge and making it available to everyone on your team.

1. Improves your employees' understanding of their roles (and their autonomy).

Regardless of whether your employee is the new team member on the block or a well-seasoned veteran, everyone on your team should have an understanding of your company’s operational preferences along with the current (and safe) approaches to perform their job effectively and efficiently. SOPs can help accomplish this.

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When your employee understands what’s expected of them and the steps required to complete their job responsibilities satisfactorily, their job performance will improve. Think about it this way — they’ll waste less company time (and reduce frustration!) if they have a thorough understanding of where to begin and what steps to take next. Uncertainty around these processes could cost you time and money, too.

SOPs can also enhance your employee’s autonomy because they reduce the need to constantly check in with their supervisor about whether or not they’re approaching a task in the right way. With an SOP, they’ll have what they need to do, step-by-step, right in front of them.

2. Chronicles tribal knowledge and democratizes it for the team.

Regardless of your industry, employees come and go for many reasons. And while they can’t take company property with them when they leave, they can depart with tribal knowledge (sometimes called, hidden knowledge) if you don’t have a set of SOPs in place. 

Tribal knowledge is any undocumented knowledge that just a few people in your company have, but that everyone could benefit from. Documenting your SOPs can help you capture essential company tribal knowledge before it walks out the door with your newly-departed employee.

One of the easiest ways to document your SOPs and make them easily available to every member of your team is by creating a business playbook (AKA, company playbook).

A business playbook keeps all of your policies, procedures, SOPs, and processes in a single place that’s accessible to everyone. 

An effective business playbook will contain four primary elements:

• Your company profile (the story of your company, what you stand for, and how you got there).
• Team members (including their roles, responsibilities, and how to contact them).
• Company policies.
• Company processes and procedures (SOPs and more).

Democratizing your procedures for the entire company instead of allowing a few employees to retain a monopoly on that knowledge is another way of showing your company’s commitment to transparency and breeding a company culture of trust.

Of course, the right hand doesn’t always need to know what the left hand is doing. But when it comes to SOPs, that’s sort of the point — to get the necessary information and how-tos in front of the employees who need them.

3. Boosts consistency and efficiency.

With a diverse team comes a variety of unique and innovative approaches to complete any task or process. 

While that can give your company a competitive edge in the field, sometimes innovation isn’t always a positive thing. For customer satisfaction (and quality’s sake), sometimes, you need things done the same way every time.

Providing your team with clear how-tos can get you closer to predictable (and reliable) outcomes. This level of consistency also helps improve the customer experience, saves time and resources, and boosts quality assurance and overall employee performance. 

Safety and compliance

It might seem obvious, but it’s worth mentioning — detailed, step-by-step SOPs can reduce the likelihood of human error in any given process. 

While there’s always a possibility that something can go wrong, a clear and tested set of SOPs can, generally speaking, make a process safer. Of course, this assumes the SOPs are always up-to-date and as clear as possible. 

Similarly, when procedural changes are necessary, it’s critical that a company also stays on top of those changes by formalizing them in their SOP. Think of your SOPs as a living document — it’s going to be changed, updated, and even have parts of it scrapped over time. Here are a few of the most common maintenance issues you’ll want to keep in mind when you create and maintain a set of SOPs:

• Lack of history. Meaning, annotating the SOPs with the correct version number and date to show the trajectory of procedural changes.
• Absence of procedural changes.
• Missing page numbers and other helpful visual cues and formatting.
• Failure to include a summary of changes from one version of the SOPs to the next.
• Failure to provide easy access to employees.

4. Allows you to identify gaps and measure performance.

When your procedures are documented in SOPs and your employees begin completing tasks the same way every time, it becomes easier to evaluate and measure their performance. That’s the beauty of standardization, right?

When something’s out of place — and by that, we mean the process might take longer, or the outcome of a process is different from the norm — it becomes noticeable pretty quickly. That’s where you get to decide if you’re going to reward an innovative approach or hold an employee accountable for not following the procedure.

Performance and accountability

With a set of clear SOPs at their fingertips, it’ll become easier for you to assess your employees' performance and identify gaps that need filling. 

You need to know they’re actually consulting those SOPs and not just approaching or performing a task the same way they’ve done in the past. The truth is, they might also need additional training after you’ve put the new SOPs in place. Accountability is everything. 

One of the most effective ways to hold your team accountable to your new SOPs is to track their progress and test their understanding. A Learning Management System (LMS)-alternative can give you the capability of creating training modules, tests, or quizzes that will show their understanding of the procedure.

5. Easy delegation.

Let’s say you have an employee who isn’t meeting their performance goals. Maybe they’re calling out a few times per week, fulfilling half as many orders as their colleagues, and their customer satisfaction ratings are nosediving. Damage control is likely at the top of your to-do list.

And that could mean delegating some (or all) of their responsibilities to a higher-performing team member. 

Armed with a set of clear SOPs, you’ll save yourself “debriefing” time. While there may be a learning curve for the other employee (depending on their current role and responsibilities), the SOPs are there to help guide them.

You might want to also think of this scenario as an opportunity to test the clarity of your SOPs. If the employee stepping into the new responsibilities isn’t familiar with some of the procedures, you’ll be able to see if the SOPs alone can bring them up to speed. 

 And if not, that’s valuable information. They could be identifying a gap in your SOPs without even knowing it. You’ll want to make note of the following issues during their transition:

• What is the employee asking questions about?
• What is clear to them and what isn’t?
• Could they complete the task?
• Did it take them longer than usual to complete it?
• Did they achieve the desired results? 

6. Saves time and money during employee training and management.

With remote operations on the rise and employers honoring their employees' demands for a better work-life balance, it’s only natural to create a streamlined and automated training and management model for your team. What do we mean by “streamlined”? 

A set of SOPs that make training and management efficient, time and cost-effective, and where every process and procedure is in one place. All of this without sacrificing the purpose of the training, to begin with — to build your employees' skill set and institutional knowledge, help them grow into or develop further into their role, and hold them accountable at every turn.

No matter if you have a new employee that requires onboarding and training or a long-term employee in need of new training for updated practices and procedures, clear SOPs that are readily available to everyone in a single platform will save you time, energy, money, and a host of other resources. 

That’s because they won’t be knocking on your door wondering where the latest update is or if they’re following the procedure correctly. There’s no reason to hide the ball and keep hidden knowledge reserved for just a few employees. 

Transparency and accessibility can make a new employee’s training experience a positive one, setting them up for success in the long run. And that can help your established employees achieve consistency faster, perform better, and step into their autonomy by knowing what’s expected of them. And that can only help you maximize output and production while preventing organizational failures.

Ready to make your SOPs readily available to everyone on your team? 

Not every process needs to be turned into an SOP. It may seem time-consuming to document your SOPs, but the long-term benefits — and the return on investment (ROI) — are well worth it.

You want to achieve consistency across the board by establishing clear SOPs and making them easily available to everyone. Doing this can lead to numerous benefits for your team, including improving employee efficiency and productivity, encouraging their autonomy, and streamlining their initial and ongoing training.

New and established employees alike need access to the resources and tools that will help them perform their responsibilities to the best of their ability. And when employees feel they can do that, it’ll boost their morale and help you retain them for years to come.