By Beth Hedger, Learning and Change Consultant
Springtime makes most people think about giving their house a good deep clean between seasons.
What if you also applied this “spring cleaning” motivation and energy to your business? When was the last time you and your organization focused on honing your business processes? Let’s use a “spring cleaning mindset” and get ready for seven suggestions to spruce up your processes, policies, and procedures!
Processes, Policies, and Procedures – Spring Cleaning Guide:
1. Do you have a repository (or need to create one)?
Having one location where all your company processes, policies, and procedures are stored is beneficial for easy reference and maintenance. It could be as simple as a spreadsheet with links to all your documents saved in SharePoint or a spreadsheet plus a centralized folder structure where all the source documents are saved. Depending on how big your organization is and the number of documents to organize, you may consider investing in a database solution. The key to a repository is the ability for you and the business process owners to be able to locate all your documents easily.
2. Do you have an inventory?
Before you begin to de-clutter and revise, be aware of what processes are already in place and how they map to the business. Whether the inventory you manage is company-wide and requires each function to participate or if your inventory a subset of a larger effort, establishing a baseline gives you a starting point for your evaluation process.
3. How current are your process documents?
As you review, make note of revision dates, process owner names, and any clues in the document that the information is outdated. Does the content even apply to your current business environment? (i.e., procedures for sending faxes, products you no longer offer or support, etc.).
4. Determine the need to delete, combine, revise, or create new documents.
Once all your documents are sorted, inventoried, assessed revision dates, and identified owners, here is your first decision point. Is getting organized sufficient or are there opportunities to delete, combine, revise, or create new documents? Sometimes just getting organized is sufficient to start a using a regular review cycle to assess revision requirements.
5. Get stakeholders aligned and committed to a deeper dive if needed.
If you believe a focused effort with multiple stakeholders (i.e., departments, leaders, subject matter experts, business functions, etc.) is required, it’s time to gather targeted groups together to do a needs and benefits analysis. Time is money and timing the initiative may deciding factors so you will need to obtain agreement and sponsorship if a broader initiative is required.
6. Establish a maintenance and review cycle.
Regular reviews of your inventory can help reduce the potential of a “revision date pile up” where large numbers of documents all need attention at the same (and often inconvenient) time. With a little planning, teams and leaders can check their inventory monthly or quarterly to manage update cycles more efficiently.
7. Leverage technology and automate.
Where you can afford the investment to automate routine activities and transactions (think Applicant Tracking Systems, Learning Management Systems, using databases to organize information, etc.), do so! Think about ways to be more efficient, reduce costs, and ensure your team members are doing “work only a human should do.” This Forbes article is a great jumping off point to explore the principles of process automation.
Whether this is the first “spring cleaning” your business has done or your business has a “spring cleaning rhythm,” take a deep breath and get started before the spring weather draws you outside!