Facility procedures are the backbone of a well-functioning workplace.  It is vital for organisations to standardise their procedures for all workplace operations. So why is it important to have good procedures in place? Defined procedures that are available for all staff set the standard for how work should be done, allowing less room for error, miscommunication, and non-compliance.   A good procedure provides guidance, answer questions, takes away any vagueness, details best practice and helps keep your staff compliant with the law.  Staff should have easy access to procedures to ensure they know the standards for conduct and appropriate behaviour.

Every procedure you create for your organisation adds structure.  The more structure there is the easier it is to form the best possible work environment for your staff.

What’s the best way to produce procedures?

Your procedures need to detail how your policies are carried out, with step-by-step instructions for routine tasks. Procedures affect everyone in the organisation, so it’s important that people across all departments should be involved in writing procedures.  Speak to the people who perform the tasks to ensure you get the steps right.

The procedures could be written in your word processor of choice, this would then need emailing to relevant staff or kept somewhere everyone can access it.  Keeping all your procedures on a cloud-based smart facility management software system ensures everyone can see the procedure at any time.   Using software such as OpsPal allows visibility and transparency throughout the whole organisation.

Writing procedures is a hard slog, prioritise the most important ones and deal with them first.

Create an initial draft of your procedures, get feedback from the staff that will use them, it is important to make sure they can be transferable to daily operations.  It is likely the first draft will need some revisions.

Once the procedures are written you need to create a plan to ensure compliance.

Firstly, you need to distribute among all employees.  This could be done by printing out all procedures and creating binders or emailing all relevant staff, but let’s be honest how many people will read that? A solution would be to use facility management software like OpsPal for your facility procedures.  Using suitable software means all staff can view the procedures, even when not in the office, they can be easily searched to answer any questions employees may have.  It also ensures easy updating, without having to redo the whole document.

Your procedures are living documents and should be reviewed and updated regularly.  Using cloud facility management software will help keep on top of reviewing the documents and keep a log of all updates.

To find out how OpsPal can help you create and keep your procedures all in one easy to access area please get in touch. Craig@opspal.com