3 Tips to Effortlessly Maintain Your Business SOPs

Answering Your Questions: Maintenance Standard Operating Procedures

Small business owners around the world have a list of questions about SOPs. What are business SOPs, and how do you maintain them? Who’s in charge of updating them when changes occur, and why are they important in the first place? 🤔 

We’re glad you asked! Before we reveal our three key tips for updating small business SOPs, let’s dive into your questions. 

🧠 Already know the basics of SOP? If so, scroll to the next section: Tip #1: Make SOPs Convenient. 

What Are Business SOPs?

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are guides that detail how to complete tasks inside your business. Think of them like a Google map. Sure, you can wing the drive as you go, but an SOP provides a faster, more efficient route. 🚘 

Some standard operating procedure examples include:

📝 How to create invoices
📝 How to communicate with your clients and colleagues
📝 How to complete projects according to your business model 

How Do You Maintain SOPs?

Make it a regular practice in your business. While updating your SOPs may feel like an extra task, once you get into the habit, it’ll become a regular part of your routine. 

Consider scheduling a maintenance task every few months or every quarter to revisit your SOPs and modify them if needed. This will ensure your operating procedures reflect new developments, like software changes. 📅

Who Is Responsible for Maintaining SOPs?

You can have team members who engage with the operations daily, such as managers, subject matter experts, and employees, to take the lead here.

We discuss this more in Tip #3: Create a “SOPs Needing Update” Report. 👇

Why Are SOPs Important?

SOPs are more than roadmaps. They’re checklists that ensure you complete a task or a project successfully. Or in other words, they help ensure you don’t screw up!

SOPS are also helpful for:

✅ Maintaining quality assurance
✅ Boosting productivity and confidence
✅ Documenting essential details about how your business functions
✅ Supporting training and onboarding 

Now that we’ve covered our main bases let’s discuss how you can effortlessly maintain business SOPs. 

Tip #1: Make SOPs Convenient (00:21)

Do you and your crew keep forgetting to update or refer to your SOPs? If so, accessibility may be key. 🔑 

Our Marketing Coordinator, Mariah, recommends putting relevant SOPs in the task description area of your project management software. 

Placing it in plain sight ensures employees can find them easily without scouring the company’s files for the answers. Plus, it keeps the SOPs top of mind for updates. ✏️ 

Mariah also acknowledges how daunting long SOPs can be, making people less likely to use them. Imagine opening a doc to a 7-page SOP. That’s enough to deter anyone from utilizing it! 😱

In this case, team members may stick to the status quo because it seems easier than reading through an extensive guide.

To this point, Sarah, our ProcessDriven Coach, emphasizes creating SOPS that are:

✔ Short and sweet
✔ Skimmable
✔ Easy to consume

📢 Workshop shoutout: Is all this talk about SOPs inspiring you to take another look at yours? Awesome! We can be of service to you during our live virtual workshop, SOP in a Day™, where we’ll provide expert feedback in real-time.

Tip #2: Demonstrate Using SOPs to Solve Problems (03:53)

Sarah highlights the importance of being a leader who is an example for the team. How a manager responds to an issue says a lot about how safe the workplace is for employees to make mistakes and learn from them. 🤝

For example, it’s powerful for a new team member to witness a colleague identify an issue and develop a preventative measure in an SOP to ensure it doesn’t occur again. 

Mariah seconds this notion, expressing that learning opportunities improve your work culture and processes.

You can weave your work culture into your SOPs by: 

👐 Having empathy for employees and embracing learning opportunities 
👐 Conducting team meetings to share what’s going well or poorly
👐 Updating your SOPs routinely to support your workflow better

👂 Want to hear our full chat? If you’re a member of the Indie Ops Network™, you have access to this Process Improvement Plan, and our process mapping brainstorm, inside your account’s PIP lab. If you’re not a member yet, apply here to join our exclusive virtual community of operators!

Tip #3: Create a “SOPs Needing Update” Report (08:29)

You may wonder about the best approach for maintaining business SOPs. Do you change things on the fly, or is there a more proactive method?  

Sarah advises reviewing SOPs that have not been in use recently. If any operating procedures require updates during a designated timeline, create a task to assess and approve them. 👍 

For instance, you can assign a task to review all your SOPs every quarter or revisit them every 60 days.  

At the same time, updating SOPs just for the sake of revision is not necessary. Many of your operating procedures may not require any modifications. Whether or not your procedures require adjustments, it’s still beneficial to get in the habit of inspecting them every so often.

If you make any changes to your SOPs, be sure to communicate them with your team. You can share a simple note stating that you reviewed the SOP, and it’s good to go.