The 3 Things All SOPs Need to Have

When your team (or you) sits down to write an SOP it can feel really daunting. Lots feel pressure to get it all right. To make sure that every single thing is listed, the process is perfect.

Well, I’m here to tell you that there are really only three key things that you absolutely need to include in your SOPs.

Miss these items and you’ll probably have some pushback from your team on whether these documents are useful, so try to incorporate them into your writing. 

If you don’t have an SOP template, you can copy mine here.

And if you want the quick and dirty 3-minute version of this, check out my 3-minute ops tips video on SOPs.

Let’s jump in.

Pre-work: define what an SOP is in your business

The first thing you can do to prepare (so before you write your SOP) is to give it a definition. 

Almost every client I’ve ever worked with has had a different answer when I asked them the question ‘what is an SOP’. Often folks are thinking differently about what an SOP is and how it should function, so before you go creating a library of SOPs, make sure we understand what we’re looking at.

At Operations Agency, we define an SOP as the following:

A Standard Operating Procedure is a task that is consistent with ongoing operations. SOP documents are step-by-step instructions for completing one task within a specified period of time. Users of SOP documents should have everything they need to complete a task detailed in an SOP linked right into the document.

We do have other operational documents that we leverage in our business and in clients’ businesses including workflows and checklists which are just fancy compilations of SOP documents. But we can chat about that later on.

Critical item #1: the reference or resource section

Imagine you’re going to bake a cake. Or prepare a dish that you’ve never attempted before. What’s the first thing you look at? The recipe. 

Think of your reference section as your SOP recipe. It should define the very simple question: what do I need to have access to or what context should I have before completing this task?

 Often when teams are first introduced to SOPs, they are really given checklists without context, resources, or reference files. They may open up the document and start going through the checklist and realize they needed access to a bunch of documents, login information for a few platforms, and perhaps some other items. And it’s frustrating. It’ll throw a wrench right into their workflow and prevent them from hammering out the tasks they set out to accomplish.

Excluding the reference section is one of the most common mistakes I see businesses making with SOPs and it ultimately affects utilization.

A reference section is just a quick high-level table at the top of your document to let folks know what tabs to have open and what logins to snag before completing the task.

TIP: make sure to link your screencast overview as well as a reference. 

Critical item #2: list all the steps

OK– no-brainer alert, but hear me out.

Lots of folks write checklist-style SOPs. I want to challenge you to go a level deeper. 

Checklists are great, but they are typically high-level lists of what needs to be done, not how to do something with excellence. 

So, if I’m asking a team member to post on social media and I want something done exactly to my standards, I’d likely record my screen and dictate everything I’m thinking through as I’m preparing the post, logging into the platform, writing the description or caption, creating the settings on the video or the blog post. Give as much detail as possible.

Don’t worry either about getting this right the very first time. The cool thing about running a small business is that they are always evolving and changing. That means your SOPs should, too. 

TIP: include screenshots in your SOP document for each of the important actions they need to take. 

Critical item #3: highlight completion filters

Completion filters are commonly referred to as ‘definitions of done’. Basically, what do we need to see, what can we check off, or how to we understand that this task is done to standards?

Let’s go back to the baking-a-cake analogy. 

If we get a recipe for a basic vanilla cake and it comes out looking like this:

Then, yes, I’d say we passed our first completion filter.

If it comes out looking like this:

Suffice it to say, the job has not been completed to standards.

Baking cakes and SOPs can be so similar in that the order matters. The ingredients matter. 

If I’m responsible for making a social media post, but I don’t have the topic or access to the platform I’m supposed to be using, then I can’t make the post.

Completion filters are helpful to place at the end of your SOP after someone has walked through the steps. They should be specific and include numeric measures if possible (ex: completed in under 2 hours, reached out to 15 cold leads) or team members should be able to check something off in a project management tool. 

I’ll often prompt my team in the form of a question. These questions correspond with our project management tool and team members are responsible for checking boxes and adding dates indicating that this has been completed.

TIP: outfit your project management tool with the completion filters from your processes. It’ll make utilization a breeze and you won’t need to go digging through slack channels or bugging team members about whether important tasks have been completed. 

If your SOPs include these three critical items, you’ll be able to delegate tasks much more efficiently and your team will have the support they need to take the baton and run with tasks. 

Before you hire a new team member, before you you pass off any critical tasks, do yourself a favor and get a screencast made walking through the task and highlighting these three elements. Stress levels will decrease, guaranteed.

Yours Operationally,

Alyson