Don’t Fear the audit – Why It Is Smart to Reserve Some Budget for Your Department’s SOPs

Fall is here. Your team has been working hard all year. Your planning has been great, but there’s still some budget left. What to do with it? We’ll explain why you should reserve budget for SOps.

Get your Standard Operating Procedures up to date.

Read in this blog post why it is a great idea to invest some of your budget into getting your department’s SOPs updated. And why it’s smart to hire someone to do it for you.

Bring everyone up to speed on latest procedures

The first reason why it is smart to invest in SOPs is to get everybody up to speed with how you do things. When you’re like many business professionals, you have strong drive to get things done.

You want to see results.

But during that process and the demanding corporate day-to-day, you don’t find the time to document what you’re doing.

If you get promoted or change jobs – or a key player in your team does – where does all that performance go that you’ve helped build?

Exactly.

So writing down how you and your team become so successful is a great idea.

Be audit-ready

After the audit is before the audit. You might know it already, or you might not have a specific date yet: But you will get audited in the near future.

These audits will assess your risk management, governance and management systems and – very generally – your processes.

And next to workflows, you know what your main tool is to convey that there’s good management and structure: SOPs. And up-to-date SOPs at that.

So instead of halting all productive work once you get an audit announcement, why not use remaining budget at year-end to get your SOPs up to speed.

Sleep well before the next internal audit. Get your SOPs written.

Avoid the backlog

You might even be working regularly on your SOPs. But let’s face it: The year-end is a busy and challenging time for the team. Work that is not time-critical will have to wait.

So naturally, things like SOP updates will slow down during that busy season.

But do you really want to start the New Year with a backlog of SOPs to update?

That’s why it is advisable to get them done before year-end as during any other time.

Onboard new colleagues faster

Having up-to-date and easy-to-use SOPs will help new team members in your department get up to speed faster.

Whether these new team members come from outside of the company or switch internally: The better your documentation, the easier it will be for them to learn.

Use budget that you might lose otherwise

Regardless of how great your planning is: If you’re a careful spender, you will end up with remaining budget at the end of the year.

You know what happens if you don’t spend that budget: You will have a hard time arguing for the same amount next year.

So you better spend it. Why not to reap all the above benefits.

Have your team work on your goals, hire someone for SOPs

In our experience, you know what the major reason is for not having up-to-date SOPs? Time.

You just don’t have the time to write them yourself. Or better put: There are more valuable things to do with your time.

Let us help.

Get in touch with us to get your SOPs updated. The sooner, the better.