Why is it important for businesses to have SOPs?

Hey Folks,

I know many of you would have been waiting for a post update very eagerly and now I should add patiently. Sorry folks for such an undue delay in publishing this post 😊.

Coming to the post finally, as title defines, the topic of this post is “What is SOP and why every organization should have formally documented SOPs.”

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An important way to ensure consistent quality is to be able to standardize processes and laying them down expressively in a formal Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) document. By ensuring that company’s staff is working in sync with the formally laid SOP, will not only increase its efficiency but will also significantly reduce the possibility of an error. While each person in the organization wants to do things, which are right for the company, there might be a case where they may have a slight variation in their thought to process w.r.t right things. Which in turn means that how things are done is likely to vary from person to person. If a company expects everyone to follow the same set of practices, then it must expressively communicate these practices to everyone through a formal written document.

For those who have not experienced working in line with formal SOPs, I’ve put together an article to explain what Standard Operating Procedure is and why an organization should have them.

A standard operating procedure, or SOP, can be described as a step-by-step instruction drafted by the management to assist staff in performing the day to day tasks. SOPs are made to attain competency, to maintain quality standards and to ensure a degree of consistency in practice.

SOP is a very specific document whose content may not only vary from company to company but may also depend upon the process for which it is being drafted, the level of the company, the involvement of management, the regulatory framework etc.

Why Should Organization have SOPs?

SOPs is a great tool to ensure that an organization has a proper quality system in place, to keep a check on the efficiency of staff and to manage the costs. SOPs can be regarded as the bible for the employees which they can refer to, in case of any confusion or lack of clarity in any task or process. Following are some of the benefits which organizations can get by introducing SOPs-

Establishes a control system.

When a business wants to maintain a standardized quality of its product or service to meet its customer’s expectation, standardized procedures can play a key role in ensuring the same. SOPs ensure that the staff adheres to the defined flow to reduce the possibility of skipping any key step impacting the product’s quality. Religiously followed SOPs helps in ensuring that the product or service is of set quality standard and helps in maintaining the integrity of the product.

Simplifies Performance Management

SOPs can assist managers to assess an individual’s performance as SOPs can be used to develop the performance parameters. Staff who has performed in compliance with the SOPs knows what is expected of him/her and indicates towards their efficiency.
Thus, SOPs help manager to set up a benchmark for employees and those employees who surpass these benchmarks can be appraised.

Ensures Continuity of process with least interruption

SOPs also plays a pivot role in transforming an organization from a people driven organization to process driven organization. Imagine a scenario wherein all data pertaining to a process was stored in an employee’s system. When he leaves the organization, the data goes with him/her and even if data is there, no other employee is aware of the data or what he/she needs to do with it. Thus, in the absence of any formal SOP documents, such scenarios can be avoided. If there has been a proper SOP of roles performed by terminated employees and what all data will be generated in the process, even if an employee leaves without proper handover, the incoming employee can always refer to the SOP document to know what he is required to do & how to perform a task.

Introduces uniformity across branches

If the company is conducting its business from several branches based at different geographical locations, then ready-made SOPs can prove to be a handy tool in ensuring uniformity in how a task will be conducted across different branches.
This will also reduce the learning curve period of an employee who is getting transferred from one location to another location, within the same profile.

Acts as a training module for staff

Companies can use SOPs to provide standardized training to staff who are new to the organization, to explain what they are supposed to do and how are they supposed to perform a task.

Hope with this article, one can understand the importance of SOPs in an organization and how you can use it to standardize practices across different geographical locations and to increase the efficiency of staff in your business.

Happy Learning!!!