Your company probably has some business systems delineated. You may have a sales process or a procedure for building your product. You may have customer service procedures that are there to keep customers happy. You may have a hiring system or a procedure for firing.
However, if your business is like most, you likely run into difficulty when trying to get employees to use existing systems and follow procedures.
Why is this? What is holding employees back from following your system?
Use the below “how-to” to discover how you and your workforce can fix faulty systems and get workable processes utilized throughout the company.
Discuss the Purpose of the System
As a business owner, you know the reasoning behind a particular system. In fact, you have probably tried one specific process in various ways before finding just the right way to do it.
However, your employees don’t have the level of experience that you do.
Most under-used processes and procedures are simply lists of steps with no additional logic or information.
Take a step back and consider: Why is this process or procedure necessary? What made me want to create it?
You can go even further and discuss the process or procedure with the team or department that will be using it. Find out how they could best use it- and why they must nail down a workable procedure. You may be surprised by their answers!
What is Working? – And What Isn’t?
Look into what existing processes and procedures ARE being used, and which are not. This is a great way to discover inconsistencies in some basic procedures.
For example, your HR processes may be functioning perfectly. But, as soon as a new employee is handed off to their boss, training breaks down.
When you look into it further, you may find that HR was the conduit to your office processes during hiring and onboarding. Their team lead may not have the same access – or may not know they have access to these processes.
It could also be that some processes and procedures have simply not been kept up-to-date. They may have steps that discuss old technology or require in-person actions that are now down remotely.
Modify the systems so that they actually work for your company
Test System Access
As mentioned above, sometimes the issue is just access to the system. It could be that your system is kept in binders and has not been uploaded to your company servers. It could be that your processes are kept in a subfolder of a subfolder of a subfolder and is so buried that no one can find it.
Adjust the physical “home” of the system so everyone can access it.
Do a Dummy Run
Every system can be perfected. If you have a system that doesn’t seem to be working or is no longer in use, test it out and see where it could be improved.
You can always perform your test run as the first step in this “how-to.” Some businesses use the “dummy run” to create a conversation around the process or procedure being tested. This way the whole team is involved in improving the business system.
Are you looking for guidance in building effective processes and procedures that actually get used? Contact Business Success Consulting Group today!
