The events of 2020 have tested the processes, procedures, strategies, and infrastructure of businesses worldwide. Many business owners have had to shore up weak points with slapdash solutions as they continue to manage - and grow - their companies.
With many companies operating within a new rhythm and routine, now is the perfect time to reexamine foundational groundwork that may have been shaken during the year.
Overall Company Examination
It is time to give your company an overall examination. We covered this concept in a previous blog post called “How to Review a Unique Year.”
A brief consolidation of the idea is that you will want to take a look at your business metrics along with the changes you have made to the infrastructure and decide what is working and what is not. In this way, you can examine areas showing signs of stress and shore up these sections of your company.
Update Established Processes and Procedures
While many aspects of your company have likely changed, there are still processes and procedures that employees follow. Now is the time to review company policies, systems, processes, and procedures and update them as needed.
This is not an action that you should take alone. You can and should assign each department lead the task of reviewing their departmental processes and procedures. Additionally, employees with unique jobs or in team lead roles should review the processes in their area.
Collaboration and delegation will provide a fuller picture of what changes need to be made - and what can remain the same.
Create New Processes and Procedures
Many companies have changed their entire mode of operation this year. Thousands of businesses are now operating with a remote workforce, with employees working from home. Others have new intensive cleaning and PPE policies to which they must adhere so they can stay open. Still more have completely shifted their products or services to an online-only offering, completely changing their usual mode of delivery.
All of this is to say that your 2019 processes and procedures may be completely outdated by now. So, as you perform your review, be sure to consider creating new processes and procedures for your new mode of operation.
Here are five basic steps to creating and documenting a process in any area:
1. Narrow down what process you are documenting. For example, a broad process may be "Sales." This might be overwhelming to document. Instead, try to break the overall method into parts and document the “Selling to a Repeat Customer Process” and the "Selling to a New Customer Process" separately.
2. Assign the task of documentation to the appropriate department head. Here is a primer on how to delegate documentation.
3. Review the process. Does it make sense? Are there holes? Make any necessary modifications.
4. Give it a stress test. Run through the process with the appropriate people within the department. Does it work or do they lose the client at some point along the line? Does another department need to get involved to ensure client hand-offs occur?
Work with your employees to make the necessary modifications.
5. If everything works, implement the process on a department-wide or company-wide basis.
This is a very basic breakdown, but you can see that testing the process and ensuring it works every time is vital to its overall efficacy.
Once you have established new processes and procedures, be sure to make them available to all so that your employees can see what each department is doing and work together in harmony.
At Business Success Consulting Group, we are process experts. Contact us today and we will provide a no-cost evaluation of your business, working with you to find the weak spots before they become big problems.
