How to Get Your Team to Actually Use SOPs For Ease, Consistency, and Excellence

"Do you have any of your processes written down?"

This question usually gets one of two answers from my clients - either they have nothing written down and every day is a bit of a gamble OR they have some things written down but are disappointed that the team never really refers to them for anything.

Which begs the question - why go through all the work of trying to get processes in place if they aren't going to be used? This is a huge and common hurdle a lot of teams face.

It's hard enough to figure out the best way to improve a process and now you have to get your team on board to adopt the changes, consistently execute, and not come to you for every little question.

Keep It Simple

If you learn anything about SOPs and change management from my content, I want it to be understanding the importance of simplicity. I write a lot about it. (Check out last week's article "It Doesn't Have To Be Complicated: Solving Team Challenges With Simplicity").

The term SOPs might sound like corporate talk. The fact is that "standard operating procedures" really just means how do you want XYZ to turn out and how should your team go about doing that in a consistent way. You don't need to have a rigid writing style to have an SOP. You just need something that has clarity and detail that allows people to easily understand what the expectation and outcome or deliverable is.

Lay It Out With Clarity 

On the same note of keeping it simple is leading with an abundance of clarity. 

A few weeks ago, someone asked me for an SOP template. At first, I didn’t know how to tell them that I don’t have a templated document for SOPs. I mean, I’m the process expert, I should have a template, right? I don’t. 

But I do always include very specific things when I create SOPs for clients. At the top of each process doc, before you actually get to the process steps, I include the objective/purpose and the related resources. 

Think of a recipe. At the top of a recipe, you usually know what you’ll be making and you have a full list of ingredients and materials. Same thing for a process doc. Your team is cooking up a specific outcome. So, tell them what that outcome (or the objective/purpose) is at the beginning. It will make them understand the steps. 

Also include the related resources. Commonly, this is listed as Software & Related Team. They should know what tools, resources, and people they will need to have access to in order to accomplish XYZ. 

Get Visual

Whether you say you learn by doing or hearing or writing it down, we can all use a good visual to get the message across. Sometimes, SOPs can turn into pages and pages of steps and notes. Pairing these with visuals like flow charts, screenshots, and even training videos helps ensure clarity and understanding. It also helps employees understand that the SOP is not just a manual that insults their own competence to get the job done, but rather a helpful resource to boost their performance by making it a ready to use resource. 

You can use resources like LucidChart and Canva for easy-to-create flow charts. 

Managers And Leaders Have To Get On Board

Sometimes, the only way to get people to refer to something is to force them to. It’s easy to say that the more efficient route is for them to just ask a question if they have it because someone else likely knows the answer. Over time, this means your team is coming to you for every little question and you’re spending more of your time being the company’s encyclopedia rather than executing high-value work. 

If someone asks you a question and you know the answer has been written down, you can politely respond with “Take a look at XYZ first and then come back to me if you still have questions on this.” If you feel like that’s too dismissive, then include the link to XYZ resource. Either way, get your team in the habit of referring to the resources you’ve already put together and doing their own research BEFORE they come to you. 

Weave SOPs Into Daily Tasks & Automations

Do you know what's as clever as hiding vegetables in a child's smoothie? Embedding SOPs where they're already most needed. Like adding links to relevant SOPs in our work platforms and templates. For example, we have several process and project templates that we’ve created on Monday.com such as our Client Onboarding Template. On this template, we’ve linked specific SOPs that are related to certain tasks so that the answers to any questions are a click away within the project workflow. 

You could also consider using a platform like Trainual to make SOPs come to life and leverage other automation tools. 

Embracing SOPs 

Getting your team to refer to SOPs can be difficult sometimes if you don’t have an ongoing plan of implementing your processes. Making your team see SOPs as a helpful resource instead of just a file that sits in some forgotten folder requires simplicity, active reference, visuals, and lots and lots of communication. 

Interested in transforming your team's approach to SOPs? Let's chat! Book a Business Transformation Strategy Call today for personalized guidance on how to make SOPs work for your team in a way that feels natural and effective.