Why you need to move your operations manual online
Paper-based operations manuals are so 2006. Move with the times and put your operations online in a searchable wiki format (yep, just like Wikipedia) so that your people can search and find what they need quickly and easily. It’s time to move your Operations Manual from that lever arch folder or your brain and shift it into a place for your team to explore and learn.
In the simplest of terms, an operations manual is a document that explains how a business does things or get things done. It can come in the form of a printed small booklet or an online resource like a company wiki.
The operations manual outlines the processes that are necessary to achieve business goals, documents how to do them, and who is responsible for carrying them out.
Your operations manual might cover many different aspects of your business or your might choose to have more than one operations manual. Operations manuals can cover different work aspects such as marketing, employee onboarding, customer processes etc.
Let’s explore some of the benefits of shifting to an online operations manual.
your growing brand
For many businesses, the creation of an operations manual is a real maturing of their offer. It’s a chance to create a rock-solid foundation, that standardises and optimises processes. A commitment to the company they have spent so long building and shaping. For many, this is the first time they are documenting what they do and how they do it.
By creating an operations manual and placing it at the centre of your business, you’ll be setting out the expectations of how and why you tackle tasks the way that you do. It’s a resource that your team can turn to when they need answers to challenges that they face on a day-to-day basis.
Your operations manual can go on to become a living breathing core that holds your business together. Create a collaborative environment where your team can help to shape the content so that it stays relevant at all levels. Having an operations manual shows that your business is no longer flying by the seat of its pants - it’s found a great way of doing a task and everyone in the team will approach it in the same way.
onboarding and training
First impressions matter right? When you have a new staff member joining the team you want to be able to give them a comprehensive guide to how you do things in your business. An operations manual helps you to train new employees, providing them with a rock-solid point of reference when they get stuck.
They can learn more about your business in their own time without needing to buddy up with another member of the team. They can search for processes on how things are done and learn on the go.
Creating an onboarding checklist for your new team member can make sure that their onboarding partner can cover all of the steps for bringing them into the team and making their first few weeks a memorable time.
reduce your liability
Have you heard the bus theory? Not gonna lie - It’s a bit morbid, but it goes something along the lines of how many buses would it take to for your company not to function. i.e if you were hit by a bus tomorrow - could your team pick up the pieces and carry the load? Or slightly less dramatic - what if a key member of the team had to leave without notice? How do you capture all of that valuable knowledge out of their head before they leave? How will you train the next person to fill that role?
The point is knowledge for your business - needs to stay in your business and not be trapped in people’s heads. Because tragically or not - that knowledge can be lost.
Your online manual can form the basis of your knowledge base. The way that you do things in your business. How things should look and feel when people interact with your company. How to onboard and offboard a customer so that they feel the love when working with you. You can truly reduce your liability in this space and set your business up to be more scalable
feel organised and look good
For many business owners having the information at your fingertips can be a challenge. It’s highly likely that the file you are looking for is buried deep in your google drive and labelled with something obscure! What a nightmare! Your operations manual can be the central keeper of knowledge. The place where you link all of that important information for the people who need to access it.
The best thing about an online operations manual is that you can search for keywords and different parts of the manual will come up. You don’t need to know which part of the manual it might be located in. You can just search for the thing you are looking for.
Commit to it
Regular updating is a must. Assign a member of the team as a keeper of the manual. So that it can be kept up-to-date and jam-packed full of knowledge. When processes change or need updating its’s their task to make sure that the operations manual is updated.
You can even make it a part of your monthly review meetings to check in with the team and find out if any processes need updating or adjusting to line up with the way you are doing things. Encourage the team to submit changes and update the keeper for checking. The more you can do to make your operations manual a living breathing part of the business the more you will get out of it!
Make this shift to an online operations manual and watch it grow and be shaped by your wonderful team of talented people. What will you do with all the time you get back from being the main source of information? Maybe take a holiday! You probably deserve it - and your capable and well-resourced team can hold the fort for a while.
Ready to take the next step and start building your operations manual? Get in touch and I can help you get started.
