When you go to the doctor, there are a number of activities that must be performed before you are attended to. For example, you arrive at the medical office, pick up a ticket, and wait for a clerk to call you. You go to the balcony, and if you are a new patient, he or he will need to take your medical file, then ask you to sit in a waiting room and wait to be called by the doctor.
- What is Process Standardization?
- Why to standardize processes?
- Advantages of Process Standardization
- How to standardize processes?
- How the processes should work in practice
Now imagine that there is no order in the activities and everyone acts the way they want to. Some patients arrive and go straight to the waiting room, others knock on the doctor’s door and some speak to the clerk first. Can you imagine the chaos? It’s precisely to eliminate chaotic situations that best practices on how to carry out processes (in our example, the medical attendance process) are established. We call these best practices Process Standardization.
What is Process Standardization?
Process Standardization describes a set of rules that an organization’s employees must follow in order to complete a given task. Its objective is to organize and standardize work processes.
Consider this: there are better and worse ways to perform every activity in your company. Therefore, any process, task or procedure can (and should) adopt standardization, such as answering the phone, hiring new employees, registering suppliers, etc.
Why standardize processes?
Standardizing processes means eliminating inefficient and conflict-prone alternatives. It’s through standardization that one seeks the best way to perform an activity. Some benefits obtained include:
- Reduction of errors and losses;
- Development of a training culture;
- Greater transparency; and
- Cost reduction.
Standardization also makes the process and its responsible parties well-known from end to end, ensuring that those involved have a better understanding of its inputs and outputs. In addition, standardizing processes is a competitive advantage because it eliminates failures, optimizes internal processes, and improves products and services’ quality. To better understand the importance of this subject, read on:
Advantages of Process Standardization
Perhaps the most obvious advantage of Process Standardization is that it improves clarity regarding the flow of activities, reducing the potential for ambiguity and guesswork. Precisely by describing steps and instructions for accomplishing a task, standardization eliminates wasted employee time trying to figure out what should be done next.
When an organization cares about Process Standardization it’s looking for the best way to perform an activity. It is understood that they’re looking for efficiency, which means that standardizing processes increases the productivity level of employees.
Furthermore, once your company has a standard way of doing things, it is easier for new employees to learn how to do them. Since the work is done in a predefined way, Process Standardization helps ensure quality, especially since it minimizes the chances of crucial details being overlooked.
Keep in mind that whenever there is a standard to perform activities, the chances of errors will decrease and the customers are the ones that will be happy with this. By the way, another of the benefits of Process Standardization is the improvement in customer service. Besides establishing standardized processes to talk to customers and methods to centralize information, if your organization is more productive and efficient, your customers will feel the results.
How to standardize processes?
We understand what Process Standardization is and what its advantages are. Now it’s time to get down to business. Below we have listed the step-by-step actions for you to start standardizing your company’s processes today.
1. Communicate the teams
Transparency is fundamental. And because of that, the first step is that each leader should gather his team and explain Process Standardization, showing its advantages. Since the employees will have to deal with changes in the execution of activities, it is important to explain to them that these changes will help them to be more productive and avoid waste and rework.
2. Do process mapping
Mapping identifies all steps, involved parties, objectives, decisions, and the overall flow of an existing process. This is the crucial step in Process Standardization because it is with it that the inputs and outputs, the existing activities, how they are performed, the tools, the people involved, and the objective will be evaluated. It’s also in this step that the process will be designed or redesigned.
In cases of existing processes, the mission is to look critically at each process and analyze whether there are inconsistencies or redundancies. But not only errors should be observed at this stage. It’s also important at this point to check for improvement opportunities in order to optimize the results of both the process and the company.
To be able to see the process as a whole and draw it, it is essential to create a flowchart. This can be done manually, but it is best to use a Business Process Management (BPM) tool. If you need to know more about how to map processes, we recommend reading Process Mapping: Where to start?
3. Document the processes
After the processes have been mapped out, it is essential to have all of them documented. This documentation is essential because it will describe how the process should run in the company. This will be very useful for training new employees.
We emphasize that the documentation should serve as a guide, and should be simple and easy to understand for those who need to analyze it. The ideal is to use a well-known standard graphic notation, such as BPMN. Access our guide!
4. Hold training sessions
Your employees are aware of the changes. Now it’s time to show them what these changes will look like in practice. Hold training sessions and introduce an overview of the process, showing the importance of each person doing their job on time.
There may be some resistance here because so far there was no procedure to follow. This is normal, and the important thing is to always be open to dialogue. Soon enough, everyone will realize the benefits of Process Standardization.
5. Monitor constantly
When working with processes we have to understand that they are meant to optimize and simplify. So always keep an eye out if something needs to be enhanced or if there are inconsistencies or opportunities for improvement.
Again, it is always important to keep an open dialogue. It is natural that improvements will be proposed, and this is very valid. Remember that processes are about continuous improvement, so always monitor them!
And how are the processes supposed to work in practice?
Ok, we have seen how a process should be standardized. Now we need to understand how this workflow will work in practice. The activities in a standardized process follow a chain of tasks, with defined responsibilities and deadlines.
The best thing to do is to count on a tool that handles both the execution of the processes and their control. This is where the Business Process Management (BPM) solution comes in. Basically, BPM manages the entire process, automating the steps and thus eliminating productivity loss.
In conclusion
Standardizing processes is creating standards and criteria that employees in an organization must follow in order to complete a given task. Its goal is to make the company more productive and thereby increase the profitability of your business.
To learn more about Process Management, here are some suggestions:
We hope this article was helpful to you. If so, feel free to share it with your colleagues. Until next time!
