Do you find yourself in this situation?
You know that ScreenSteps will improve your team's performance. The idea of having a centralized knowledge base with guides that support employees without additional supervisor support seems like an ideal solution for your company.
But, you have no idea how you are going to create all of those wonderful guides. How are you going to find the time to write them? How long will it take you to launch? Is this even possible?
It is a completely valid concern. Climbing that initial content mountain can be daunting.
The good news is that you aren’t the first company to face this challenge. Many have done it before and now they don't ever want to go back to life before ScreenSteps.
As CEO of ScreenSteps, I’ve met with many companies that have had similar concerns upfront. In the end, they conquered the content creation challenge, launched their knowledge base, and saw an immediate impact on their business.
In this article, I am going to share how our most successful clients have tackled the challenge of creating the initial content in ScreenSteps.
I’ll go over the four steps you need to take as well as the three content creation approaches to help you launch within the best timeline.
Step 1: Determine the state of your existing content
Your first need to determine the current state of your content. Answer these three questions to assess where your documentation is at.
- Do your employees frequently use your guides?
- Are your guides up to date with the most recent and accurate information?
- When employees follow your written instructions, can they complete procedures without asking additional questions?
Step 2: Decide whether to import or start from scratch
Depending on the answers above, you will choose to either import existing content or start from scratch.
If you answered “yes” to all of the questions above, your organization should go ahead and import your content.
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you will want to import some content. However, be prepared to update your content by applying best practices in order to make the guides valuable.
If you answered “no” to ALL of these questions, your organization needs to create guides from scratch.
While this situation may seem intimidating, you’ll be grateful you took the time upfront to get your process documentation done right. It will pay off dividends in the long run.
Step 3: Start with a plan
Benjamin Franklin first said, “By failing to plan, you are planning to fail.” The popular phrase applies to knowledge management.
I can't emphasize enough how important it is to start with planning. It is an essential step whether you are starting from scratch or importing existing content.
Before creating any documentation, we recommend every company goes through a Find & Follow Planning Workshop.
The Find & Follow Planning Workshop provides insights on:
- What your employees need to be able to do
- What guides employees need to successfully complete tasks
- What training courses and activities you need to prepare
Without this workshop, you will just be guessing how much content you need to create. You NEED to complete the workshop to have a full picture of what will be involved.
You can conduct a Find & Follow Planning Workshop on your own by following this free guide or watching the free webinar. Or you can hire ScreenSteps to lead a workshop for your team.
Step 4: Decide on your launch plan
Once you know which situation your company is in and you’ve completed a Find & Follow Planning Workshop, you need to create a launch plan.
You have three approaches:
- Import everything as is (if you have existing content)
- Replace or create everything from scratch
- Do an 80% Launch
Approach 1: Import everything as is
Since you already have existing knowledge resources your employees are using, migrating your existing documents into your ScreenSteps knowledge base is a viable option.
If you choose to import everything, most likely, your company’s main challenge is that those resources are scattered across different applications and people can’t find them.
This approach will bring all of your resources into one location and make them searchable, resulting in an immediate improvement.
It involves doing the following:
- Importing your existing content (we can help with this)
- Launching your ScreenSteps knowledge base to your team
- Gradually going back and improving your existing guides in ScreenSteps
The benefit
With this approach, you can launch your knowledge base very quickly. You already have a collection of helpful knowledge base articles.
The downside
If you weren't getting great results out of your previous knowledge base, then just importing the same content into ScreenSteps is unlikely to solve your problem completely.
While people may be able to find your resources in less time, that doesn’t guarantee that they will be able to follow procedures and complete tasks with less effort.
The reality is that you need clearer and more results-driven content. You will want to replace and update content using the ScreenSteps tools as quickly as possible after launch.
Approach 2: Replace all content or create 100% of the required content before the launch
This is the most daunting approach and one that we don't generally recommend.
Using this approach, you decide that you need to have complete guides for everything outlined in your Find & Follow Planning Workshop report. That means you don’t launch your knowledge base until every guide is accounted for.
The benefit
When you launch, your team will have ALL of the information they need to work independently. You know you will have the most up-to-date and accurate information to support your end-users.
The downside
Unless your team can fully dedicate themselves to creating guides over a 2-4 month period, this can really slow down your launch.
Plus, you delay your cost savings by not launching sooner. Your employees need support now. If you can even provide them with some of the articles they need, then they can complete some procedures without needing to turn to their supervisors for help.
We don't generally recommend this approach either. While the perfectionist in all of us loves the idea of everything being complete, this can really postpone the performance improvements your team could achieve with an earlier launch.
And the reality is, you are never going to be completely done. There will always be a new situation that pops up that needs to be added to the knowledge base.
Approach 3: Do an 80% Launch
Our customers that do an 80% Launch achieve performance improvements and positive ROI faster than any other customers.
An 80% Launch means you have guides for the procedures that take up 80% of your employees’ time. These are your most frequently needed policies and procedures.
Why not less than 80%?
When you have guides that cover what your employees are doing 80% of the time, you are certain to see a significant productivity improvement.
You want to build confidence in your employees so they can trust and rely on your knowledge base. We have found that when you have procedures in your knowledge base for tasks that consume 80% of your employees’ time, that is sufficient to launch and build that trust.
The benefits
You provide your end-users support sooner. Employees learn how to use your knowledge base to find and follow procedures.
Employees get in the habit of relying on the knowledge base articles, so supervisors have more time to finish writing the last 20% of the guides and update your guides with the current information.
Because you are using the knowledge base sooner, you begin seeing ROI sooner.
The downside
You still don’t have 20% of the guides you need, so your employees will need support on those procedures. You’ll need to continue creating the missing guides after you launch the knowledge base.
How does it work?
Learn how to do an 80% Launch approach with the five-step process.
Achieve ROI faster with the 80% Launch
There are three approaches to launching ScreenSteps. While it may be tempting to just import everything you have or to decide you aren't going to launch until you have every procedure documented, neither approach has delivered the best results for our customers.
Doing an 80% Launch hits that sweet spot. It’s where you can launch quickly, see a big impact on employee performance, and achieve a positive ROI within a few weeks.
Rest assured, you can do this! With our ScreenSteps team of experts, you can see immediate results in your business after launching your knowledge base.
The next step, if you haven't done it already, is to schedule a Find & Follow Planning Workshop. None of this will work without a clear plan.
Speak to a ScreenSteps representative to schedule the workshop and identify which procedures are causing 80% of the problems. You will launch faster and be well on your way to fantastic results.
Need additional help launching your ScreenSteps knowledge base? A ScreenSteps expert can help you with that as well.
