Empowering Employees

When I went to school, the secret of success was a mystery. Sometimes I did well, and sometimes I didn’t.

I often felt as though I were swimming underwater and it was hard to surface. Success was in the lap of the gods.

It wasn’t until much later when I took a degree as an mature student that I worked out why, even though I was reasonably able, I found school less than empowering.
At school, my teachers didn’t give an overview of what we were going to learn. My teachers didn’t give us an idea of what success would look like, apart from subjects like applied maths where answers were either right or wrong.

At Massey University, our lecturers clearly defined what we would learn and what we needed to do to be successful. Clear instructions for assignments and itemised marking schedules to accompany them, made it easy to achieve a standard of excellence.

It is much easier to excel if you understand exactly what to do, and what standard of performance is required.

So what does this reflection have to do with documentation?

Staff perform well when they know what to do and understand the level of performance required.

This means having clear standard operating procedures are a must. This is all the more important if your business is in growth phase as it becomes increasingly difficult to give verbal instructions to everyone and very hard to be consistent. This can compromise your quality standards.

At WritersInc we ensure that information is easily accessible too. This means staff can scan a document and quickly find the information they need.

People learn more quickly and retains information longer, when information is presented in an effective and engaging way.

Writing effective and engaging training material, means we:

Ensure content and assessments can easily be matched to the learning outcomes

Appeal to variety of learning styles

Mix theory with 'hands on' activities

Ensure the material is in a logical order and presented in a way that makes it easy to locate, understand and remember.

Businesses cannot easily manage quality and business process improvement if their processes are not documented.

It's very hard to achieve consistency if each staff member has their own take on how a process works

Auditors need documentation so they can compare what your organisation is doing with the required audit standards.

So there you have it, effective procedures and training material make it much easier for you to manage quality, business process improvement, staff performance, and training.