Using resources more sensibly with SOPs

Without defined and documented SOPs, the company will have to invest more time and effort in carrying out these routine tasks. This is because only employees who have already been trained are able to carry them out efficiently. Colleagues who have not yet gained any experience in the area concerned must first undergo extensive training.

If appropriate SOPs are in place, the effort required to introduce new employees to the tasks is significantly lower.

In order to formulate SOPs for the tasks concerned, it is first important to record the exact requirements:

• What should be done?
• What information do I need?
• What are the guidelines for implementation?
• Within which framework conditions should the SOP be applicable?

The next step is to define how the task is to be completed step-by-step. This information can now be used to create an SOP. An SOP should define work processes in as much detail as possible and document them. Anyone who is to make use of the SOPs, usually support staff, must of course be able to access them quickly and easily. Collaboration tools that can be accessed via http are best suited for this purpose. To ensure that there are no difficulties in carrying out the SOPs, a comprehensive document is created during the development of an SOP, with the help of which even an inexperienced employee can complete these tasks successfully and without further support from third parties. An SOP can look like this, for example: Title: SOP – Creating a new user Short description: Creates a new user. Required information: First name, last name Step-by-step instructions: 1) Login to newuser.mydomain.com with administrator account (see password database, appropriate rights required!) 2) Switch to user administration in the navigation menu (top left) 3) Click on “Add new user” and enter first name and surname (no umlauts, ae, ue, oe instead) 4) The user name for the login is automatically generated from the first name and surname. Make a note of this and inform the new colleague. The new colleague will be asked to enter a password the first time they try to log in. This simple example shows how to formulate an SOP in detail. It also shows a clear and simple structure that should be used as standard for all SOPs.