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A small business owner's new best friend: Clear processes
As a small business owner, you must have a clear system of the processes that your employees can follow to get the job done. However, far too many small business owners don’t have any processes, procedures and/or systems set up. This makes it very hard to get an appropriate level of staff management, and the outcomes you’re looking for, if you don’t have those three things in place.
To do any job, there must be a clear process laid out so that it is done the way you want it done. Because if you don’t lay those guidelines down, your employees will just invent their own way to do it. And that may not reach your expectations or earn your approval, so it’s important to have those processes laid out. This also stops people from coming to you and continuously asking you to make a decision about something that does not require your decision making.
Regardless, systems and processes these days are much more efficient thanks to modern technology.
For example, all you need to do is:
1 Create
a YouTube channel for your business
2 Get
a staff member to film you doing the job/s you need done, the way you want it done
3 Take
that video and upload it onto the unlisted section of your company YouTube channel
4 Provide
the relevant employees with the links to the videos of their respective tasks that will allow them to see how that task is done when they are unsure of what to do
This process saves a lot of time and effort, especially in situations whereby a particular staff member is sick or leaves the company, and someone else needs to fill in for them – you don’t need to train the person all over again. You will now also have an online library which employees can always refer back to find out how the job should be done. This ensures that you get consistency of performance within the workplace.
However, the processes don’t end there!
You need to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate what it is you are doing, and the processes you have set up, to ensure that you are still following the best practice that is available to you. You can do this by addressing each of the systems on a regular basis with your team by constantly taking one aspect of the process or system and observing where there are any flaws, duplication etc. and re-evaluate it.
Also, every time an employee asked a question in regard to a particular task, turn it into a written procedure and/or film the relevant video demonstrating how the task should be performed. Therefore, having clear processes laid out for your employees to follow will help save yourself the stress, time and effort of training both current and future employees.