There are plenty of times where words aren’t enough to convey a message. Like the concept of breaking up with someone over text, much can be left to missed tone and ambiguous reference. When this happens, people can get lost in translation. In the context of Standard Operating Procedures, people might not grasp the whole of the instruction from words alone. Including images or figures get us a bit closer to the desired understanding we were hoping to accomplish.
SOP
Forgetting The Purpose
We’ve all been there. The intention was to write out a simple process for some small tasks, and now things are turning into a project. Suddenly, we’re left trying to make sense of something far more complicated, like this stock photo of a monkey who has accumulated a bulk supply of restaurant-grade water cups.
Standard Operating Procedures can get complicated from time to time. When they do, the best way to move forward is to develop a procedure’s Purpose.
Why Do We Need Standard Operating Procedures?
We know that a Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) is a concise, ordered set of instructions documenting how to perform a single task, but why do we need them? The answer to that question isn’t always readily obvious, especially in cases where essential processes can simply be taught through verbal instruction, or where the task appears so straightforward as to not require instruction at all.
Yet in actual fact, there are numerous reasons why SOPs have become de rigueur in the American workplace, and why you should regard them as essential to your own business, big or small. Here are four key reasons why your enterprise needs good, quality SOPs.
A Better SOP Template
One of the key messages of our document philosophy is that SOPs are intimately built around structure. Everyone has their own sense of structure. Of desired form. Within any particular business, there is a large benefit to organizing its complexity. An SOP template that focuses on structure can handle any task thrown at it with ease.