Completing your Standard Operating Procedures

Completing your standard operating procedures is a lengthy, tiresome process. You’ve created, written, revised, and formatted your SOPs. They’re constructed with details, continuity, and explanations. You’ve added pictures, diagrams, and troubleshooting.

Before completing your standard operating procedures, make sure to piece it together with thoughtfulness.

When you put it all together, each section should relate somehow to the one before it, and the one after it. If it doesn’t, try finding a better place to put it. Remember, the better the flow, the better your team will understand.

Still using car maintenance as an example, this specific example doesn’t follow the continuity rule.

• Section: Tires: How to replace your brake pads.
• Section: Tires: How to change your oil.

I would need to change one or the other to have better flow.

• Section 1: How to know when to replace your brake pads.
• Section 1A: How to replace your brake pads.

OR:

• Section 1: How to know when to change your oil.
• Section 1A: How to change your oil.

Include a header –

If your SOPs are for your business, or perhaps you’re writing it for another company, include the company’s name and logo at the top of the page, in the header margin.

Unless you built the content around it, adding a header will displace the items on the page. Take ample amount of time to play around with this until it fits the way it needs to.

– and a footer.

At the bottom of the page in the footer margin, include a dating system that indicates when the procedures were last updated. It can be a simple MM/DD/YYYY format, or some other dating system that you prefer.

Make sure to change the dates after all of the editing has been completed but before printing/publishing to ensure all the information has been updated.

It’s also a great spot to include page numbers. If you’re working on a larger project that includes multiple sections and even more pages, numbering the pages is a must. Don’t forget to include the table of contents!

Double check all your settings on your final draft before completing your standard operating procedures.

Before you publish or print anything, make sure all of your setting are how you want it. This includes things like:

• How it fits on the page.
• Paragraph spacing.
• Font and size.
• Margins – left, right, header and footer.
• Titles, headings, and subheadings – are they all consistent sizes and fonts? Bold or italicized?
• Quality of images, diagrams, graphs, etc.

If you plant to physically print it out on paper, save the file as a PDF or other file type. When files are converted, the settings can change slightly and shift content around.

If you’re publishing on an online platform, use the “preview” feature to view the content as a user would. Checking the settings to ensure a clean and professional view on a mobile device, tablet, and desktop.

Last but certainly not least, have it peer reviewed.

Have your supervisor, or business partner, whoever, review your work one final time. Have it read over with a fine toothed comb. Once that’s been completed and okayed, then publish!

Thanks for following along. I hope this information was helpful and you were able to learn a few tips and tricks. Now you just have to keep track of any editing that needs to be made for when you need to update. 🙂

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