5 Common Mistakes Trainers Make Writing Operating Procedures [VIDEO]

Every business needs standard operating procedures (SOPs). 

Having documented SOPs isn't enough. These SOPs need to support your employees while they are in the workflow. And it is especially important for companies that have employees directly interacting with customers.

If you write SOPs for employees who are interfacing with customers, it is likely you are making one or more of these five mistakes:

1. Your procedures include too many words
2. You include multiple procedures in one document
3. Your procedures include information but not instructions
4. You write SOPs for auditors instead of your end-users
5. Your procedures are long and include a lot of steps

Over the past 12 years, I've been writing and reviewing SOPs for businesses in a variety of industries. During this time, I've observed five common mistakes companies make when writing SOPs.

Watch this 3-minute video to learn more about these five mistakes as well as what to do instead so that your procedures are easier for employees to use while working with customers.

Write clearer SOPs for your customer-facing employees

Having documented SOPs is good. It is even better to have SOPs that your customer-facing employees can reference and follow when they are helping customers, whether that be over the phone or in person. 

Our ScreenSteps knowledge base makes it fast and easy to write clear procedures with our simple and effective content creation tools (i.e. block authoring, integrated screen capture, and more). 

Want to write clearer procedures? 

Download our free packet of SOP templates. The packet includes five most commonly used SOPs in business.