Set Up Policies & Procedures For Small Business

Update:

I wrote this a while back and reading it again I was wondering what I'd change. Not much but I would add that the technology to manage this is so much more accessible now.  That means that there is no excuse for businesses to be struggling through poor attention to creating efficient systems to use for repetitive tasks. Too often poor systems translate into work billed not being paid, and extra cost for business that it doesn't need to spend. And no money going where it can bring in new business. 

Documenting your tasks in the business and producing well-written accurate procedures and policies is your key to a well-run business.  This allows you to systemise your business and that means managing your resources and your compliance obligations efficiently.

 The spin-off advantage - your employees know what they are supposed to be doing - and how - and also why it is important.  That saves you time, ensures consistency and that makes good financial sense.

It reduces stress and lets employees function at high performance and be more productive and happy at work. 

Tasks To Be Performed

Start by capturing every duty within the role for that job. This is a great time to assess if this action is still working effectively, or if there are modifications that can be made to streamline and more efficiently cover that activity.

Starting with tasks means that those doing the role now can take responsibility for completing the tasks and documenting them as they exist. It also allows you to see if some tasks are better assigned to a different role, or perhaps delegated to a new role as the business grows. Of course for new businesses you may be carrying out ALL of these tasks yourself!

Policies and Procedures

Some policies and procedures centre around obligations that a company has to ensure compliance with work health and safety. Others are just good management devices that ensure things get done on time and in the right way. Part of your role as owner or manager of the business is to make it easy for your employees to do the right thing the right way. They should never have to 'guess' what you want or how you want it done to your company specification. Getting this right can be tricky, but this is where you need to be very clear in your instructions and cover every section!

The Employee Manual 

Creating a manual for employees gives you a head start when you want to hire a new person for a role and lets them 'hit the ground running'. You can include your vision and cultural statements and history of the business to date, as well as policies they are to follow and a clear diagram showing to whom they report, their duties and he standard that they are to perform.. Issues around uniform, behaviour and pay dates as well as holiday protocols can all be set out, as well as any drug and alcohol policy, etc. Awards that apply and any additional opportunities for training or career development that may exist can also be included. Also induction procedures.


Organisation Chart

A well articulated heirarchy showing to whom each employee reports does several things. One it shows clearly to whom the employee should go for instruction and to report - and who not to! 

This also serves to clarify to those people to whom the person reports, just where their obligations to the employee reside and makes it easier to recruit new employees if someone leaves or the workload grows and requires more employees to be added.

Training & Testing Knowledge

Having policies and procedures documented is a great start, but it is up to management to ensure that employees - and managers including the owners - understand what the policies mean and that they comply with them. It isn't enough to have a policy and then for the managers to ignore them.


Performance Management

When management and employees have a clearly stated case for what is expected, managing performance becomes simple. You can see if the policies and procedures are being adhered to and should this not be happening, remedial action can be taken as it happens, to correct the behaviour, add any resources that prevent the processes being followed and get everyone back on track.


Getting this all happening can  take some time but it is well worth it. Once policies and procedures are set up you can keep them up-to-date and manage the business more efficiently and without the headaches.

If you need help in getting started, get help.
If you would like me to work with you on this, you can contact me at the address below.

Lindy Asimus
Business Coach
Mobile: 61 + (0) 403 365855
lindyasimus@gmail.com

www.lindyasimus.com

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Business Intelligence: For Small Business Too!

In one of the not-so-rare synchronous events a blog  by Thom Singer arrived in my inbox on the topic of business analysis. He makes some good points about business analysis being the realm of larger companies with big budgets and not so much that of small and medium businesses.

It's a drum that I seem to bang a lot with clients and that is the issue of understanding the critical dynamics within a business, knowing where customers come from, what they do and why they deal with you - or why they don't.  For small business there are ways to streamline the process of collecting this information but much of it can be done with old fashioned methods.

Simply, if you know that Action A leads to Result X - if you get a good result then you can do it again. You can do it more often and predict your results over time. If you don't know what results or lack of results come from certain actions (or inactions) you can't. Simple as that.

Marketing Not Gambling

If you don't have that business intelligence for your business then you don't know a whole lot of things that you need to know. You don't know what's working. You don't know what will improve your results and you don't know what it is costing you aside from the money you spend, when you pay for that marketing initiative, in lost opportunity and sales not made.

Just like paying for that Yellow Pages ad and never tracking sales.  That's not marketing or even advertising. That's gambling.

Just like hiring employees you want to perform well... but you never instruct fully as to their role and what you expect from them, never manage effectively, have no useful reporting process to monitor their progress and never bother to review their need for training or resources. What is that?

Moving to online presence that a company generates, from the website to use of social media platforms to promote the business it is clear that the same kind of Business Intelligence (BI) is not understood and so not being captured.

Not All Websites Are Created Equal

A cursory investigation of a local chamber shows websites that are poorly constructed, not functioning in any way to generate interest and not likely to be found in a search. Oh some of them look good! Most of them don't and to Google they may as well be a blank page with nothing showing on the site.

Who is to blame? Ultimately it comes down to the business owner to make sure they know at least enough to know when they are getting quality information and not bragging from someone who talks a big game but produces nothing of substance.

Commonly I ask business owners "How do you access your website traffic analytics to check?" All too often the response is a blank expression.  This is the first question I ask when assessing a current strategy because it is clear - that if they don't know the answer to this question ... there is no point asking them anything more technical about the site because they don't know.

How then, do you make a reasonable judgement about the value of the work done so far on the website and how do you reasonably then commit to good actions going forward?

This lack of understanding results and Cause and Effect in business is not confined to poor results. It could be that the results are good - but the numbers are not suffiently understood to allow the owner to recognise that hey - this advertising we just did has not only been good - it has given a result 3x better than anything else we have ever done! And suddenly the cost has a context by which we can measure performance objectively and track against future advertising.

You cannot get good business intelligence by guessing!

Of course the response from some business owners to questions of this nature can be "Oh I'm too busy for that!"

Too busy to know if the money you are spending is being wasted.

Too busy to know if you're not spending the money that could be increasing your profit three-fold. 

Measuring is important. Too often, people go mad measuring metrics that don't matter. And neglect those that do.

Here are some simple business intelligence items that you should know now:
Where do I find the traffic statistics for my website?
Where is traffic to my website coming from?
Where is it not coming from that it should be?
Where are my customers finding my business?
Who are my top 50 customers who have spent the most with me over the past 3 years?
How much have they spent with us over the past three years?
How did they come to be our customers in the first place?
How many other customers have they referred to our business?

That's some that I like to start with. These are simple questions to which you should already have the answers. If you don't then you need to fix that... that's the first step.

The second step is to learn what to do with it.


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