Creating Efficient Procedures for your Company
Writing procedures for each task within every position in your business is extremely important in order to maintain consistency with the intend outcome and will assist in ensuring you are hiring the right individual for the position. They help define the job role, pay, time needed, equipment needed, and training, procedures clarify roles and responsibilities, they provide a standard which allows you to rate your employee performance.
For example, almost every business requires some form of administrative assistance; however, not every administrative assistant will perform the same duties and if they do, they might not follow the same procedure due to the equipment, software and needs of the business and customers, another example, would be a project estimator, the title is the same for a general contractor or a plumbing contractor, however they will have different process and procedures due to the specific duties, tasks and tools being different even though both position require meeting with the client, reviewing plans, reviewing material and labor cost in order to provide an estimate that is of benefit to both the company and the client.
Same titles different industries or even same industry different policies. The process and procedure will be different due to the equipment, tools, knowledge of industry, or software being used, etc., it is also important to take into consideration how each position effects other positions within the company and how incomplete tasks can affect the outcome of the company’s product or service it provides. When designing a procedure for a job it is always best to take notes while performing each task, even if you’ve done the task a thousand times, you want to take note of each step and if you can either take a screenshot or photo if there are specifics that can be easily overlooked this will enhance procedure clarity.
If you are hiring your first employee and don’t have a defined job role or description it is best to start with a needs analysis, this will assist in defining what your needs are, you might find that you need two or more employees instead of one, each position should not be overbearing you want enough tasks to keep your employee busy and slightly challenged but not to the point that it may cause burn-out (which can cause high turn-over) or inefficiencies (which can cause defects in product and potential loss of customers). If you need further information on how to do a needs analysis check out our video.
Process Example: Customer Invoicing and Collection of Payments, you will define the process first, 1.) entering invoices from warehouse packing slip or converting estimate to progressive billing 2.) email or mail invoice to client 3.) collect payment
Procedure Example: you will break down each of the steps within the process to provide your employee with the specific details to accurately invoice your clients and collect timely payments, or what is the process and procedure to enter a vendor bill for payment, when you have outlined the process and defined the procedure from start to finish your business efficiency is more consistence because everyone is following the process according to the procedure that is in place for that specific task.
Example Entering Vendor billing for payment
If you need assistance with defining and or designing your company’s policy and procedures, please contact us for your FREE consultation.