The Recipe for Success: Why Documenting SOPs is Essential for Your Business
It’s 2 pm and you’re hit with a mean craving for a warm, gooey chocolate chip cookie. You’re feeling confident, you could wing it, and think you can pull some cookie dough together from memory. You start grabbing ingredients… you’re pretty sure you only need one egg, feel somewhat confident it’s just one teaspoon of baking soda, and you think you’ve remembered all the steps. The timer goes off, you open the oven to a fresh batch of goodness, carefully pull apart a cookie to warm, chocolate heaven, and… BLEH! Those DO NOT taste like the cookies you remember!
If you had followed the recipe’s instructions, your chocolate chip cookies would have turned out perfectly. Just like a recipe, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are how effective businesses ensure their tasks turn out perfectly every time. SOPs are how businesses move through daily, weekly, monthly, and annual operations with precision, efficiency, and accuracy. They are a team’s recipes cataloged and followed daily to deliver successful results. Without SOPs, team members may miss steps, special instructions, or crucial ingredients, leaving a team with a poor-tasting, under-prepared outcome.
SOPs are crucial in all types of businesses. They act as a manual for recurring actions within a business, allowing teams to maintain consistency and meet ideal standards.
SOPs help when
- transitioning or training new employees
- completing repetitive tasks, especially infrequent tasks
- stepping in for an absent team member
SOPs allow team members to
- Efficiently complete tasks
- Assign responsibilities throughout a process
- Communicate when steps within procedures have been adjusted
- Stay consistent within a procedure no matter who is responsible
- Produce invariable, quality results
Let’s go back to that cookie craving, but this time you’ve done the initial work of knowing which recipe is your favorite and saving it in an easy-to-find spot in your kitchen. Furthermore, you keep the ingredients on hand in preparation for these periodic cookie cravings. Now, there’s no guesswork; you follow your steps, use the correct ingredients, and in no time, you’re savoring the sweetness of your successful SOP! SOPs, like handy recipes, inform and instruct how to move through a procedure efficiently and effectively.
No matter the size or type of business, SOPs are key. The initial ‘heavy lift’ of documenting steps and creating a catalog of operational procedures sets up efficiencies, allows leaders to step back and delegate, and empowers team members throughout the company.
Successful SOPs include
- Overviews of procedures
- Lists of responsible parties for each step
- Links to other resources
- Screenshots of details
- Video tutorials (try Loom)
- Templates
- Alternative steps for special occasions
- Formatting that visually breaks down parts (numbering, bullets, colors, etc.)
Executives and business owners can hand off building out SOPs AND set up their business to run more efficiently and successfully. Human Virtual Assistants (VAs) are a skillful resource to utilize when developing SOPs. VAs are detail-oriented, trained, and experienced in administrative tasks. They are also well aware of the usefulness of SOPs within a business. VAs can help ensure all parts of procedures are documented and none are left out for interpretation. They can format SOPs to be visually effective, and continually update SOPs as the business evolves. Not sure where to start?? VAs can also help point out when and where you need SOPs.
First steps to building SOPs
- Have a VA shadow your work
- Make a list of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual tasks
- Set goals/timelines to track progress
- Set up an online folder for storing all SOPs
- Outline processes
- Record videos of processes or tasks for a VA
SOP Templates For You
Check out our general process, sales process, and hiring process SOP templates to help you get started on your journey.
SOP Template Download
Check out our general process, sales process, and hiring process SOP templates to help you get started on your journey.
It’s time to step into the kitchen and look at what recipes need to be written down within your business to keep cooking up success!
Need a VA to help you get your time back and generate your SOPs?
Contact us to learn how!
She finds fulfillment in serving others and facilitating their daily routines. With a special affinity for small businesses and individuals balancing work and family, she appreciates the importance of flexible work environments.
Lauren Lea holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Environmental Design and an Associates in Restaurant Management specializing in Culinary Arts. Her diverse vocational background spans catering sales, personal chef services, design work, healthy living consulting, fitness instruction, and household operations management.