Standard operating procedures (SOPs)

A standard operating procedure offers detailed, written instructions on how to perform a routine business activity and explain the process being described. 

A standard operating procedure (SOP) is a set of step-by-step instructions compiled by an organization to help workers carry out complex routine operations. The word "standard" can imply that only one (standard) procedure is to be used across all units. 

SOPs aim to achieve efficiency, quality output and uniformity of performance, while reducing miscommunication and failure to comply with industry regulations. 

The purpose of a SOP is to provide detailed instructions on how to carry out a task so that any team member can carry out the task correctly every time. The purpose or objective of a SOP should restate and expand a well-written title. A well-written SOP will facilitate training.

Whether you’re starting a business or trying to improve an existing one, you have to understand how things are going to get done.

What tasks do you need to do? 

Who needs to do them? 

What are the best ways to approach these tasks?

Working out how these questions can be answered is the first step toward systemizing your business. The creation of processes and workflows will define the way in which your day to day activities function.

One popular approach to this is the creation of standard operating procedures. The simple definition provided by IBM for standard operating procedures is:

..a set of instructions that describes all the relevant steps and activities of a process or procedure.

Following are essential steps for writing standard operating procedures (SOPs):- 

Step 1: Understand how you are going to present your SOPs:-

There are a number of formats you can choose from when defining how you’ll structure and present your standard operating procedures. 

The international standard you probably use if you work in a large company is ISO 9000, or some variant of that.

You don’t need to follow international rules to create a good procedure though. 

Here’s a structure template for writing a single procedure which has all the benefits of being compliant to top international standards for big businesses while also being simple, easy to edit, and collaborative.

Step 2: Gather the relevant stakeholders

We’re strong believers in the power of collaborative creation. If you’re going to be creating standard operating procedures for particular tasks, processes, or workflows, then you should probably contact the people who will be, or are already, responsible for those duties.

If you’re a manager and have a team of people working each day on a set of tasks, you’ll want to understand the thoughts of your team in regards to best practices. After all, these are the people you pay to perform these recurring tasks day in day out. 

Teamwork is vital for any business.

 

Building processes collaboratively not only brings in more expertise and scrutiny, it also provides a sense of ownership over the process to the people who are following it. By working in this manner, the process feels like less of a diktat and more of an agreement.

Step 3: Work out your purpose:- 

What are you looking to achieve as you build these standard operating procedures?

Are they brand new? 

In which case, you’re trying to create systems which function.  

But you also want them to function well, and you need to make sure the priorities within the process are aligned with the priorities within the business.

If you’re looking to produce standard operating procedures which cover existing processes and workflows, then you have a few more points to consider.

What are your pain points? 

Where are your existing processes letting you down and what can you do to change that? .

Maybe you don’t know – and this is why you’re documenting; to investigate. Or, more likely, you’ve recognized that the current system is too slow or the final product is not consistently of a high quality. You have a pain point which you wish to target.

Step 4: Determine the structure of your SOP:- 

If you’re in a large company, the standard operating procedures will take the form of a quite formal report.

The typical approach to a report like this is to include a cover page with the title and all the relevant reference details, followed by a list of chapters, before embarking on the processes themselves.

If you work in a startup or a small company, this level of formality isn’t always kept to. Nonetheless, this approach is founded on common sense structure and it’s a good idea to follow it.

Within the Process Street platform, we’ve constructed our export features to deal with this and to present the online processes report-style when exported to Microsoft Word.  

This way, we’re able to operate by our processes with the flexibility of the platform while also giving clients who need it the ability to save processes as PDFs for reference purposes in line with ISO-9000.

Step 5: Prepare the scope of the procedure:-

If you’re forming a set of standard operating procedures for a particular aspect of a content marketing team’s work, you should be focusing on them and their needs. Learn where to draw the line to stop you wandering off into other teams or departments.

You can discuss how a workflow may span multiple teams, but you should know from the beginning whether that is the case or not. Define the limits of your investigation or you’ll end up with mission creep.

What are you dealing with? 

What action initiates the process you’re working on? 

What action finishes the process you’re working on? Define your scope.

Step 6: Use a consistent style:- 

 

Again, if you’re working for a large multinational, everything you do is going to be more formal than Gary and his startup of one.

Whether you’re going to be using sharp formal language or not depends on the professional setting you’re in. 

However, we do have some tips and tricks built up over time which are broad suggestions applicable in all scenarios.

1. Start with action commands. Always use a verb at the beginning of a statement for a task. This kind of language makes it clear what you have to do and it packs a punch.

2. Be concise. Don’t waffle in a SOPs report. Be clear and convey the important information only. Talk to the air rather than the reader.

3. Make it scannable. Normally, that might be considered blog writing advice, but when listing detailed instructions for a particular task within the workflow, put the actionable sections first and follow with the explanation. 

Don’t make readers sift through paragraphs of text every time they want to follow the SOPs.

Step 7: Use correct notation, if applicable:- 

 If you’re at a large company, they may have a system which you have to learn and follow. 

Some of these systems are a little idiosyncratic and tied to the company. 

Most, however, will use a standardized form of notation like Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)

No one says you have to use BPMN or any variation thereof, but systems like that are useful in you’re in a corporate environment or one where you have to work closely with people from other companies. Think of tools like BPMN as universal languages, the Esperanto of business process management.

You may be able to employ some of these mapping techniques and methodologies later in the process if they’re visual rather than textual.

Step 8: Work out all the necessary steps of the process:- 

Now it’s time to put in the hard graft.

Collaboratively walk through the process from start to finish noting down every step which must be taken along the way. Allow for input and discussion across the team, and record down any further steps which are suggested.

Then, once you have the spine of the process, go through and look at each task you have recorded. 

Are there sub-tasks which can be added to that task to further explain either how it is done, or by recommending productive ways to do it? If so, include the sub-tasks too.

This extra detail is important to make an easy to follow process. 

Within Process Street, you can create sub-checklists in tasks to tackle this need. Sub-checklists provide a simple way to make processes appear straightforward while also adding actionable detail.

Step 9: Try to assess potential problems in the process:- 

Once you have your process on paper, it’s time to think about whether things can go wrong. 

And if they can go wrong, where would that failure likely happen?

If you’re using your standard operating procedures to govern a manufacturing process, which can be accounted for easily by numbers, then you can run the calculations. 

Maybe your process results in high output in terms of production but puts strain on distribution? 

You know your business better than I, you can make those assessments.

We noticed in our content creation process that in-depth articles created a degree of risk.

 If the work was being finished too close to the deadline, then there was always the possibility that the deadline would be missed.

More likely, the deadline won’t be missed, but less editing and iteration can occur on an article – which risks a reduction in quality.

We tackled this by simply attaching earlier submission deadlines to articles. This way, the whole team can work one or two weeks ahead of schedule and risk can be minimized. Sometimes the most effective changes to a process can be some of the most simple.

Step 10: Determine metrics against which the SOPs can be judged :-

To know whether your process is performing well or poorly, you need to have metrics to judge it against.

It is not good enough to assume the process is simply working. 

We need to understand how it is performing so that we can optimize it.

If you’re constructing SOPs for a sales process you may be looking at metrics like:

• How many leads are generated per week?

• What is the average length of a sales call?

• How many conversions are we getting each week?

• What are our sales totals per week?

Once you’ve established what questions you’re asking, you can act upon them. 

How were you performing against these questions previously? 

Has the new process improved these numbers? What long-term targets do you want to set for staff to work towards?

Once you have the metrics defined, you can assess the performance of the process, and assess the performance in relation to the company’s broader goals.

Step 11: Test the process It’s time for the moment of truth:-

Now that you’ve defined your standard operating procedures, you can put them into practice.

 How you implement them is up to you and it depends on the resources you have available.

Maybe, to continue with the sales example given above, you have a sales team of 10 and you set 3 people on the new process. 

This controlled test of the new potential SOPs will allow you to gather comparative data in real time on the performance of the two models – existing and new.

If you’re happy that your new business process is better than the previous one and you want to implement it straight away so that you can start iterating, then you can test other areas. 

For example, we have an internal customer support process, I’ve previously mentioned, which we run every time we deal with a customer question.

This process was forged over time and now functions smoothly and easily. 

One of the methods we used to test how easy it was to follow was to put new hires in the company on level 1 support in their first week.

 They were left with customers and a process. This was a baptism of fire – not just for the hire, but for the process. If the process was good enough, the job would be done well regardless of experience.

Step 12: Send the process to superiors

If you’re running your own company, then you may not have any superiors to send your SOPs to.

Really, it’s more about having someone with experience look over the standard operating procedures to give you feedback.

 Someone who was not involved in the collaborative creation process, and can look at the flows with fresh eyes. If you’re a small business, this could be an investor, someone from your network, or even a valued customer!

If you’re working in a large company, this will likely be a mandated part of your SOPs writing process in order to seek approval on the work. If so, make sure to send the results of any testing you have undertaken along with the draft SOPs.

Step 13: Clarify the method of optimizing the process:-

Optimizing the process over time is a crucial step of creating it in the first place. I’m under the belief that the process should be thought of as a living document.

No process is ever perfect, and nor can it be. The processes can, however, be as good as we can possibly make them.

Optimizing a process involves a number of the steps we have already covered.

 It is important to remember that we work as a team and the processes’ strengths and weaknesses might be found by the people who follow them each day. 

Stay collaborative in the optimization process.

Where you’ll seek to optimize could – and should – be driven by your key metrics. If they are the means by which you’re measuring performance, then they will likely guide you in your pursuit of the perfect process.

Step 14: Run a risk assessment on your process

A risk assessment is an important part of finalizing any project.

If you’re a software firm, you’ve probably already covered this in one of the above sections where we look at where things go wrong.

However, if you’re in manufacturing, transport, or a range of other industries, the risk assessment is even more important. 

Whenever you have actual real human beings doing something under your direction, you’re responsible for making sure they’re not going to be hurt in the process.

Don’t overlook safety in favor of speed.

Step 15: Consider creating a flow diagram

Flow diagrams or workflow maps – or whatever nomenclature you prefer – can be useful in multiple ways:

1. Visual overviews. Sometimes it is useful when presenting information to give visual aids. These aids can contextualize information from the beginning, improving the clarity of your more detailed written explanation.

2. Help employees understand their role.

 Flow diagrams provide employees with a visual way of understanding what is being asked of them. But that’s not all. Helping make sure that your employees understand their position within a broader whole makes the process work better and improves employee accountability in the workplace, to boot.

Step 16: Finalize and implement the SOPs

Congratulations!

You’ve completed your new standard operating procedures. If you’ve followed the process from beginning to end, your SOPs are essentially guaranteed to improve performance. They should have been tested, they have optimization strategies built in, and you’ve made sure they’re safe.