I'm going to talk about something really exciting today - it's documentation! I know that you're all going “Yes. I love documentation!” Yeah right – I don’t believe you sorry. 😊
When you look at it in a different light, I'm sure you will get excited with me.
For those of us that are in the ISO standard world, there is a clause called Documented Information, which is clause 7.5.
Now I think it gets a bad rap, I'm sorry to say. You read this clause and you might think blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's all about document control, creating, and updating, it's very bland and I'll just say boring. It seems like that you have to do all of this stuff just for an auditor or just to get certified, but it's not it at all.
I'm going to share with you a different way to look at documentation.
If you document your processes, it frees you up and allows you to grow in your career.
It gives you the freedom to go and do other things. You won’t be so heavily relied upon.
People won’t go “Jackie’s got to do that as she’s the only one that knows how to do that”.
Honestly, if you’re saying this in your business, this is just ridiculous! Sorry, but why would you want to hold onto something and be the only person that can do it.
When will you go on holidays or retire? How are things going to get better if you don't let other people be a part of the process?
This is one powerful reason to document your processes. You can share it with people. When you're away, they can pick it up and they can do it.
We do a great thing here at Auditor Training Online. When we document one of our processes, we get someone to actually do it and test it. Not just when we're on holidays or away, we get them to follow the procedure while we're actually here. Because guess what, we don't always document it right.
What we think is clear is not clear to someone else, so we get someone to test it so that when we are away it does make sense!
The next thing that documenting your processes gives you is consistency.
If you know me, you will know that consistency is one of my favourite words. If you're documenting your processes and you or a key person is away enjoying some time off, then at least you know that your customers will be receiving the same level of service and outcome that they expect or have received before.
It means that the outcome for your customers will always be the same. It will be consistent. What your customers expect one week they'll get the same the next week or the next month and so on. Unless of course there are improvements and changes, but if we document it, we have a consistent output, which gives us our satisfied customers every single time.
Why wouldn't you want to do that? Honestly?
To finish off with I’d love to share a couple of tips with you that we do here at ATOL and have found really beneficial.
For our internal documentation, we use OneNote. It’s light and agile and not so formal so it’s great for internal use. We partner our documentation in OneNote with videos. We record our videos using Vimeo record.
When we talk about documentation it doesn’t mean it's just hard copy, paper, or electronic folders, it can also mean software programs/tools and video.
We use Vimeo record to talk through the process while we are actually doing it. Then all we have to do is put the Vimeo link in the OneNote procedure.
There is no uploading or downloading of great big video files taking up valuable hard drive space. It’s important that these videos are broken down into small chunks of the process so they are easy to digest and follow.
These videos are supported by key points underneath the video link. These key points explain briefly what the process is.
This means that if someone is completely new to the process or you only conduct or follow the process irregularly and may not remember, then you follow the video.
If it’s something that you are familiar with and conduct regularly then you might just need to follow the key points explained under the video link. This way our team have both ways of learning and reference.
We added this method of documenting as we just weren’t doing it. I mean, documenting seemed and was such an arduous task that it was all too hard, so we didn’t do it! This is really common in a lot of businesses that I visit. If something is too hard or takes too long it just doesn’t get done.
Whatever process you follow to document, make it easy and simple, and flexible enough to manage change.
Contact us now with your questions regarding your own documentation. I’d love to help!
Note – this is an excerpt from the Auditor Training Online Facebook Live, view the video here.