If your employees notice that a machine part in the company suddenly developed a minor fault, what do you expect them to do? Report the issue to the maintenance department or see if they can fix it on their own.
The former might lead to a delay in completing their tasks, which could affect the company’s processes. The latter could lead to damage to the company’s equipment, requiring you to spend more time and resources on it.
This is where an operations manual comes into play. When you have one in your organization, you can easily guide employees on what to do whenever they’re faced with any challenges and how to do it. That way, you’d save them the stress of always looking for someone to answer their queries.
Aside from that, it also helps you to establish a standard operating procedure that will help your business operations run smoothly. That way, a new employee won’t randomly introduce a process into your workflow without first informing you and other team members.
To build a functional and scalable business process, you need an operations manual template. In this post, you’ll learn exactly what they are and how to write them. We’ll also give you free access to 25 operations manual templates that you can download, tweak, and use for your business.
As your company grows, the workforce expands, and the workplace dynamics become more complex. To simplify the entire flow, you must create an operations manual.
This document offers the structure upon which all staff approach their day-to-day tasks. This includes how they approach clients, what they say to them, how you request payments for your products/services, how you work with vendors, and so on.
Having this documented roadmap for the company’s policies and procedures is one way to ensure that all workers work from the same perspective and toward one common goal.
What Is an Operations Manual?
The operations manual is the written material that a company uses to help its employees and workers perform their jobs accurately and efficiently. It contains the established standard methods for producing things and safely providing services. The purpose of this handbook for employees is to remind them how to perform their duties diligently and efficiently.
The operations manual can also be a printed document that contains standard operating procedures and describes the organization’s hierarchy, like the top-level staff members, their contact information, and the company’s overall emergency protocols.
Many companies make the mistake of assuming that the operations manual is the same as a training manual. This isn’t the case at all. While the training manual is used to train new employees in your company during the onboarding process, the operations manual is a handbook that all employees have access to and use at work every single day.
If you’re on a hiring spree, you’ll spend more time training new employees using the training manual. If you’re not actively hiring, you’ll spend more time supervising and retraining your team on how to improve their productivity, not on getting started with new tasks.
Benefits of Using an Operations Manual
Ever experienced a situation where a new employee, who thinks that he has years of pertinent experience, messes up the overall job process because an operations manual isn’t available?
This and many more are reasons why you should use an operations manual in your company. Below are some other reasons:
Keeping Operations Consistent
For every task that you and your employees perform, the operations manual gives thorough guidance and completely documented processes. It demonstrates how you should conduct your business operations and sets steps that everyone in the company must follow.
For instance, as a restaurant owner, you want to make sure that your clients can expect the same high-quality food and top-notch customer service delivery every time they visit. This will help you to attract and retain your customers more effectively.
Reducing Employee Learning Time
New employees, regardless of their level of expertise, require some time to become familiar with your business operations. This is because organizations have different ways of doing things.
A well-written and well-researched operations manual will serve as a knowledge base for employees. It will be a resource that your employees can consult when they have a question or need something explained.
New employees can quickly read the operations manual to learn what you expect of them and how they should complete their tasks. That way, they won’t disrupt other team members at work or waste time trying to figure out how to perform their tasks.
Centralizing All Critical Resources and Processes
When a key employee is unable to work, the business activities do not have to come to a halt.
Alternatively, an employee can stand in for them using the business operations handbook and continue with the operations as if nothing happened at all.
This is possible if you’ve documented your processes, hierarchy, job descriptions, emergency protocols, and other relevant information and stored it all in the operations manual.
Making Task Delegation Easy
Holding everyone accountable for their activities can help to eliminate human error. A well-written operations manual does this. This is because it shows all employees what they must do and who to contact if a problem arises.
Furthermore, when you need to delegate a certain task, you may quickly determine who can assist or advise you based on their job description.
Knowing that each employee is aware of the responsibilities of others is a powerful motivation. This will lead to better efficiency and output from your employees.
Improving Customer Satisfaction
Have you ever called the customer care section of a company and the agent couldn’t answer your inquiry, and then you called again on that same day and a different customer care agent was able to solve the same inquiry you’d called for earlier?
Situations like this happen if the company does not have a detailed operations manual.
Your company’s operations manual should spell out how to deal with customers, including how to handle their questions, refunds, promotions, and follow-up. Your personnel will treat all of your clients fairly and equally if they follow this manual, resulting in consistent customer service.
When you deliver efficient customer service consistently, you’ll have a loyal and pleased customer base in the long run.
Chapter Two: How to Create an Operations Manual From Scratch: A Step-by-Step Guide
Now that you know how important operations manuals are, it’s time to create one for your company. Here’s the information you need to include in creating the manual so it’s useful and functional.
What to Include in an Operations Manual
The important information to include in your operations manual to ensure that your employees perform each of their functions at an optimum level, in a professional way, and without external aid, are as follows:
Company contact information: This includes the company’s address, phone number, fax, website URL, email addresses for key departments, and other information that people can use to reach out to the company.
Hours of operation: The operation hours highlight the company’s working days and the hours of each day’s work. This is important as it helps the employees, vendors, and other stakeholders know when the company opens and closes for work.
Organizational chart: The organization chart will graphically display the people and positions at the strategic, technical, and tactical helms of affairs in the company. It also shows how employees will interact and discuss the company’s issues with them.
Job descriptions: The job description for each role will be itemized. This will include everyone that’s directly or indirectly responsible for efficient process delivery.
Password lists or where to find them: In a remote company, or in situations where devices or machines need some level of authorization before they can be efficiently utilized, your operations manual should have a section where passwords and entry access codes will be documented.
Emergency procedures: This highlights what to do, what to press or ring, and who to call when certain issues happen. For instance, when you sense a data breach, what should you do first? Should you call the chief data officer, or shut down the entire system to truncate the theft process?
Disaster recovery plan: The disaster recovery plan details some step-by-step plans toward recovering any loss.
Contact information: This is a section that contains the required stakeholder’s contact information. This is important because you might need to contact them for inquiries or guidance quickly. These stakeholders can include specific employees, vendors/suppliers, insurance companies, bank accounts, attorneys, landlords, etc.
How to Write an Operations Manual
Writing operations manuals is a daunting task. Many operations manuals have a few basic similarities, and some require adding extra sections and themes to make them stand out.
Here are the three key boxes to tick as you write your operations manual.
Choose the platform for your manual
Online or in print, choose the platform you want your operations manual to be. If you do so online, you’ll be able to make edits and update newer information as quickly as you want, and it will have an impact in as many places as you desire. But if it’s in print, making changes will be a hurdle. This is because you need to make the edits on all the copies you’ve made, or you discard all copies of the operations manual each time an edit is made.
Though using the online platform could be expensive, the value always pays off when you need to update the document or share it with your team. Aside from saving you time and effort, it allows you to create a template or select an existing one to document your processes as relevant, actionable, and trackable checklists.
You can also add variable permissions, allowing only those who need access to your important data.
This way, you have all your processes in one place which means you can access them from anywhere with an internet connection.
Plan a consistent layout
Images, charts, guidelines, and quotes are also a part of the operations manual. Knowing how to arrange these on the document is important. This is why the layout of your manual will be determined by the platform you use to produce it.
You have to be consistent with the layout, so identify how you will place your document typeface, divide each section, include photographs or screenshots, a page counter, and so on.
Create the operations manual
After finalizing the layout, it’s time to start writing the operations handbook. Note that you shouldn’t face this alone but rather discuss it with your teammates and line managers in various departments to contribute their experience.
The more people involved in the planning and creation of the operations manual, the higher the likelihood of using it. When you use the expertise of people with more experience than you to document your operations manual, it will increase the likelihood that they will accurately use it.
So when you write this document, include the roles and hierarchy, as there must be a list of responsibilities—people who are in charge of each department, who reports to whom, and so on.
Also include information about how to contact specific people who hold important roles in the operational process.
For instance, you might be on the lookout for a security engineer to contact in the event of a cyber attack. To prevent delay in communication or reaching out to the wrong person, including the compilation of a directory of all corporate personnel, complete with their names, titles, job descriptions, and contact information.
Following these steps will help you write a functional and usable operations manual.
Here’s a short video that walks you through how to create an operations manual:
What Is the Best Format for an Operations Manual?
The truth is that there is no specific format for writing an operations manual. You can either create yours in the form of a booklet, mini book, or something extensive. What matters is that you touch the key aspects that make your operations manual useful.
If you’re tech-savvy or work in an organization that values the use of tech to solve problems, you can leverage online tools and software to create your operations manual. SweetProcess is a very good tool to achieve this. It can help you to create an encyclopedia of operational processes for your company.
With SweetProcess, you can create a process for your company’s operations manuals from scratch.
Aside from that, you can also create a procedure as well.
You can also use the software to add steps of a procedure to a process.
Finally, you can add as many procedures as you want to a specific process.
Having a tech-based operations manual such as this is important because you’re able to save the details in the cloud. When you make changes to it, you don’t need to spend money on printing and replacing the manuals, as they’ll be updated and immediately ready for use. Another important consideration is that you can go entirely green, saving the environment from “flying papers” and you can update the operations manual from any location.
How to Update and Distribute Your Operations Manual
If your operations manual is created on a word processor, all you need to do is to access the document, make the intended changes to it, print and distribute accordingly. However, this process leaves you with several problems ranging from printing to distribution, and if the operations manual is not available on the cloud, then you can’t update or distribute them unless you’re at the office.
But if you’re using a process development tool like SweetProcess, updating and distributing your operations manual is going to be a seamless task. You’ll simply log into your account area, make the changes, update and distribute to all your employees, or some specific line managers. All will be done within a few clicks and minutes.
This will also give you the leverage to change and update your operations manual as many times as you need. There won’t be any fear of wasting resources when you spot a slight mistake in a recently updated operations manual.
Chapter Three: Operations Manual Templates: Uses and Advantages
Now that you know how to write an operations manual, let’s proceed to the different use cases and advantages of an operations manual template.
Uses of Operations Manual Templates
Documenting the operations of your company could be a long-term lifesaver for your company. When you do this, your successor will be able to take over your operations and build on your success.
The operations manual can be used for several things in an organization, some of which are:
Liability Reduction
Creating an operations manual minimizes liability in your organization. If one of your employees or customers suffers financial loss or injury as a result of one of your products or services, or as a result of a procedural or safety issue at work, one factor that courts will consider when determining liability is whether you had an operations manual in place to prevent problems.
One way to demonstrate that you took appropriate procedural precautions to comply with rules and take adequate quality control and safety measures is by having a documented operations manual.
Increasing the Scalability of Your Company
A well-documented operations manual can also help your company grow. It’s much easier to apply the same procedures on a larger scale or in different locations when your methods are documented for reference. Instead of reinventing the wheel, employees in different locations can simply repeat the procedures currently in place.
Time Savings
Another significant advantage of the operations manual is time savings. When new employees have access to reference materials, they know where to go for answers when they have questions, allowing them to get answers faster and waste less time. A uniform operations handbook also saves time for experienced staff with inquiries or who require a refresher.
New Hire Training
Having new hires read the company’s operations document during onboarding is a great method to familiarize them with the company’s rules and procedures. It has the strength to improve training efficiency as it predicts frequently asked questions from new employees, allowing existing staff to spend less time answering queries.
Advantages of Operations Manual Templates
Operations manual templates act as blueprints for creating operations manuals. They make the process of creating an operations manual easier and more seamless.
When you use operations manual templates, you’re able to quickly generate ideas for the document you’re creating and align them with what’s easier for your team to understand, hence saving more time and money.
Here are some other advantages of the operations manual templates.
Helps in Cost Cutting
Using a ready-made operations manual template is less expensive than contracting a professional designer who doesn’t know about your process to create one for you from scratch.
By opting for pre-made templates, you can create operations manuals at significantly reduced costs, perhaps netting commissions that would not have been received at higher costs.
You can then create an unlimited number of operations manual formats so you can easily select from numerous templates.
Ensures Appropriate Outfit
Operations manual templates allow your manual to have a standardized and necessary functionality adding value to the document and allowing it to portray the needed significance to your employees.
In most cases, a finished template is created with all of the necessary components in mind.
Allows for Faster Switching
A template-based operations manual design can easily be replaced with a new one.
After a few years, you’re unlikely to want to give up an expensive bespoke design because it still hurts too much financially—assuming you didn’t have someone amend the template until it looked like it was made from scratch.
When you use a template, you can easily modify the one you already have and immediately switch to another design.
The business operations manual template helps you to document in detail how your business functions. As a business owner, it helps you easily handle and delegate tasks to staff and other entities that make up your company. The operations handbook specifies the processes that are required to meet corporate objectives, as well as the documents that detail how to carry them out and who is responsible for them.
The restaurant operations manual template outlines the duties that are critical to the success of your restaurant. It comes with instructions on how to complete the duties assigned to owners, management, and other staff members. It also shows who is responsible for each task listed. It is a thorough compilation of standards, checklists, and responsibilities, as well as other pertinent information for all employees.
A sample operations manual template has only one purpose, which is to remind personnel how to perform their duties in a simple but easy and understandable manner. The sample operation manual is a book or folder of printed documents that contain standard operating procedures, a description of the organization’s hierarchy, important staff contact information, and emergency protocols.
A standard operations procedure manual contains all of the organization’s written instructions and most important duties in one document. An SOP manual is a collection of all of an organization’s individual and departmental SOPs, stating and explaining in minute detail what every person in your company is expected to do. Employees can consult the SOP manual if they have any doubts about proper processes.
The printable operations manual template is a document that shows you how to manage present and future operational employees with the information they need to understand and operate each system to its full potential. It is the systems handbook that concentrates on how to utilize the equipment rather than how to maintain it, specifically how to interact with it for full functionality.
The main purpose of the basic operations manual template is to remind your personnel how to carry out their duties. The manual is a book or packet of printed documents that contain standard operating procedures, a description of the organization’s hierarchy, important staff contact information, and emergency protocols.
The emergency operations manual is a document that helps you to manage any emergency case that may erupt in your company. It is a series of written instructions that spells out what your employees and others at the workplace should do in the event of an emergency and also how to avert or prevent it. It must include provisions for good communication between the person tasked with coordinating the emergency response and everyone at the workplace.
The financial operational manual template shows how any stakeholder and even new members of the committee or staff in your company can determine what activities must be completed, who will complete them, and who will ensure that they are completed correctly. It can also be used to track the financial duties and other transactions that your company operates.
The coffee shop operations manual is a document that you can use to follow through on the activity that occurs in your coffee shop.
It is a written set of your operating procedures that is clear and succinct and is useful for training new personnel and maintaining consistency. It also creates a blueprint that you can use to replicate your success and grow your brand in new areas. This template is required to improve productivity and profits in a coffee shop.
A school operations manual template can be adapted in your school to make activities easy for both staff and students. It is a collection of most of the legislation governing common school system operations, as well as other laws influencing school operations. Administrative rules that have been adopted to improve the laws are also included to guide and govern schools.
A real estate team operations manual template contains policies and procedures outlining the expectations of brokers, staff, and independent contractors, as well as the framework for conducting the company’s real estate dealings. It is a template for your real estate company that focuses on how the activities of the company are achievable with each person’s role stated clearly, without conflict.
The warehouse operations manual template simplifies how humans operate manual warehouses and storage systems, which includes storage locations and racking systems that are not accessed by automated systems. It helps you to pass the information surrounding the warehouse to your employees. It includes statements of purpose for the warehouse, staff needs, storage facilities, and other documentation.
An employee operations manual template helps you to pass important information to employees regarding the standards that are required of each person. This details how to execute a job activity or handle a specific circumstance in the workplace. It can also be used to improve the productivity of your employees.
A church operations manual template helps in the administration of the church and includes sections on how the church is controlled, how money is handled, and harassment and abuse policies. It also specifies departmental information, policies and procedures, contact information, and their operations.
A construction operations manual template is used to carry out construction activities. An operations and maintenance (O&M) program includes training, cleaning, work practices, and monitoring to keep asbestos-containing materials (ACM) in buildings in excellent working order. It explains the scope of the project and the type of construction to be used and as-built drawings in a format that has been agreed upon. It also contains plans for services, register of assets, operation and maintenance instructions.
The flight operations manual (FOM) template is used to keep in check all activities that are related to flights and air attendants. They are essential for keeping your flight department organized. The policies and procedures of the organization, as well as standard operating procedures and training needs, are all included in a decent flight operations manual. A FOM improves safety and efficiency while lowering operational expenses.
The help desk operations manual template helps you direct all help desk officers in your company and serves as a single point of contact for users to contact IT with requests. It is an avenue to discover answers to technical difficulties, as well as to troubleshoot and address known issues with the software and hardware that make up the organization’s IT infrastructure.
The home-based business operations manual template helps you to organize, coordinate and direct your home-based business. Recently, homework has taken on a new meaning. The desire to achieve economic independence has prompted a great number of people to sell their abilities and talents from the comfort of their own homes.
The IT operations manual template helps you to handle all businesses surrounding the information security policies and procedures document which includes an acceptable use policy, a computer usage policy for employees, a BYOD (bring your own device) policy, IT security planning, IT risk assessment, and IT security auditing methods, among other things.
A franchise operations manual template helps you as a franchisor to use the franchise operations handbook as a how-to guide for communicating system standards and criteria to franchisees. It also helps you to manage your employees and guide them to be productive and exhibit professionalism.
A hotel operations manual template helps you as an owner of a hotel to adopt an SOP that your employees follow. This aids in the consistency and quality of service delivery and sets standards for your hotel. It also helps in the organization of role assignments for the effective performance of each employee.
The non-profit operations manual template explains and guides you on how to perform your duties as a non-profit organization. From project planning to impactful idea generation and funding, this template has you covered. It contains the standard operating procedures that you can use to describe your organizational hierarchy, prepare important staff contact information, and create emergency protocols.
The office operations manual template helps you to coordinate the affairs of your company and employees so that they can perform at their highest professional capacities. With it, you will create and manage office procedures to attain efficiency with every stakeholder in your office, i.e., employees, clients, investors, vendors, and the general public.
The company operations manual template helps you to form the processes and procedures that your employees should follow to work at their best. With this template, you can create a framework that stands as a work communication platform between you and your workers so that tasks are delivered accurately, efficiently, and without waste of resources.
The small business operations manual template serves the sole purpose of reminding your employees of when and how to perform their duties. With this, you’re able to focus on other core tasks because you are assured that your team is always doing the right things. This is important because, in a small business, you wear many hats. Having this in place will put many tasks on autopilot, which helps you to spend more time on other urgent activities.
When people adopt a particular operations manual template, some questions pop up in their process of aligning it to the needs, functionalities, and specifics of their business. Below are answers to some frequently asked questions about the operations manual templates.
Does my business need an operations manual?
Your business needs an operations manual—unless you don’t want to establish yourself as an authority in your space or don’t want to maintain a high standard of excellence in your organization. But if these are important to you, then you must create an operations manual.
Also if you want to create employee training material for your employees, the operations manual will help new employees become more acquainted with how your business functions before they get into the main details of the professional training.
Should I buy/use an operations manual template?
Buying or using an operations manual template is recommended if you’ve never created one before. This is because an operations manual template will save you a lot of time and effort when it comes to putting together your company’s operations document. Preparing these documents from scratch requires a lot of effort and resources. But when you use a pre-made operations manual template, you’ll get better guidance as you create yours.
How can I create an operations manual template?
Before creating an operations manual template, you must have a deep understanding of how your entire business process works. Once you do, make sure you define the business policies that guide your organization and specify the job roles and organizational hierarchy. Afterward, you can begin writing the details of your operations manual template.
Here is a video that outlines everything you must know in order to create an operations manual outline for your business.
How can I create an operations manual in Word?
To create an operations manual in Word, here’s a short video tutorial that walks you through exactly how to do that.
Chapter Six: Take Full Control of Your Company’s Operations Using SweetProcess
Is your company’s current operation management dwindling the efficiency and profitability of your winning potentials? This has happened to other organizations but they were able to find success using SweetProcess.
Take, for instance, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), a government agency that focuses on adult protective services, child protective services, childcare investigations, prevention, and early intervention. They use SweetProcess to take full control of their operations.
The problem DFPS had was that they process over 40,000 records a year which is a lot of work. To overcome this, the department created work manuals using tools such as Microsoft Word, SharePoint, and Excel. But all of these were inadequate in meeting the demands of the job. With bits of information stored in different places, there was a lot of back and forth that made their work complex.
The problem became so overwhelming that Justin Compton said, “We found ourselves in a place where we had three very large manuals. One was over 200 pages. The other one was about 100 pages… This operation is complex.”
Then they found SweetProcess. They knew it was the one they must subscribe to because of its unique features. Heather, an employee of DFPS, describes the software as a process machine.
She said, “I really like SweetProcess because it lets you build a process machine. It’s not just another place to store a book of processes. It lets you plug everything in so that it’s all cohesive and yet independent.”
SweetProcess helped them to streamline and improve their business process documentation. One area in which the DFPS has greatly felt the impact of SweetProcess is in its business process documentation. The organization documented its business processes in manuals, but they were cumbersome and all over the place. SweetProcess helped them to get rid of the complexity with its easy design and features.
One of the advantages of using SweetProcess to document your company’s operations is that you can easily give all your employees access to the template.
You can do this by navigating to the top right corner of your dashboard and clicking on “Create Team.”
Next you’ll be redirected to a new page where you can name the team and write a brief description for it.
After adding all the necessary details, then click on the “Create Team” button. As soon as you do, your team will be created on SweetProcess.
From the new dashboard, you can add employees as members of the team and assign new roles to the team members.
As you can see, SweetProcess not only allows you to create procedures and processes for your company but also ensures that it’s well organized and accessible to the right team members.
Aside from DFPS, ParcelPoint also had issues with its logistics and supply chain.
“It just gets disorganized and chaotic,” said Charlotte, who is in charge of the company’s operations management.
When everyone is just doing whatever they can at work without a guide in a specific direction, things become upside down. One person does one thing and another person does something else, producing different results.
The need to tie up loose ends in their departmental operations propelled Charlotte to search for a helpful system on the internet, and then she found SweetProcess. Immediately she signed up for a free trial, and it proved to be very useful.
She said, “Because we did the free trial, I was able to already set up quite a lot of stuff, and they could see how it was going to work. It wasn’t just in theory, they could see how we were already using it. I think that helped with getting the buy-in for the signup.”
With most of her team members in another country, she can onboard and train them remotely using SweetProcess. She further said, “I’m based in Sydney and the majority of my support team are in the Philippines, and through the use of SweetProcess, we can onboard and train a whole remote team. Without the help of SweetProcess, we wouldn’t have been able to do that.”
Another similar example is Stone & Wood, a brewing company that produces quality beer in the Northern River region of Australia.
Updating work procedures and processes was their challenge. Employees working with outdated procedures altered their entire production, leaving the team with no option but to start afresh—a big waste of time and resources. When they updated the procedures, training and onboarding became a must.
According to Thomas, the company’s quality assurance and sensory coordinator, employee training and onboarding are two areas that his organization has felt the most impact from using SweetProcess.
SweetProcess helped them bring new workers up to speed with how things are done in the organization and they were able to provide the needed resources and help the new entrants acquire knowledge in the shortest time possible.
For every organization that wants to succeed, having an operations manual is a better way to coordinate workflow and ensure that processes move at a faster pace.
One, it gives you consistency which is essential for building a successful and respectable business.
Two, it allows you to establish systems and specifics that duplicate your business model, and also helps different units to achieve their full development and income potential subtly.
Now that intellectual property management is fast becoming a thing in the global business community, having your operations manual helps you to maintain your trademark, brand names, corporate logos, or other intellectual property material.
Want to know the operations manual templates to use for your company? Click here to download the templates relevant to your industry, and get ahead of thousands of businesses that must build it themselves from scratch.
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