​Regina’s grandmother had suffered from painful arthritis ever since Regina was a little girl. Looking back on it, she can pinpoint the moment she fell in love with chemistry and helping people. She was determined to make her grandmother’s life better. From that early childhood chemistry set to her now full-fledged holistic herbs medicinal line, she was not only helping people like her grandmother but also people who walk into her shop and present with various ailments daily.

She found her passion and ran with it. Regina opened her shop just over a year ago after connecting with locally sourced growers and distributors allowing her to scale production, obtain a business license and shop location, and get the word out through her dedicated customers. And, then the dragon showed up on her doorstep. She received notice that one of her locally sourced product ingredients had been tainted with E. coli.

Regina watched the news and understood how devastating this could be, but she didn’t have the first clue about what she should do to protect her customers and her business. She immediately removed any product containing the tainted ingredient and posted a sign in her shop. Unfortunately, she didn’t keep customer records, so she had no idea who had purchased the products or how to contact them.

Fast forward to a year later and Regina is having lunch with her new boss, Sylvia. Sylvia, interested in getting to know Regina more, asked Regina why she closed her business. When Regina finished, Sylvia asked, “What about your standard operating procedures???”

Operating a business without a set of written policies, procedures, and processes that define and list tested and approved step-by-step instructions on how to handle and execute specific tasks is risky, at best. Businesses across industries leave themselves open to expensive and embarrassing incidents—and possibly worse—when they fail to implement standard operating procedures (SOPs) that cover hiring, compliance, quality control, and replication and growth. Implementing SOPs isn’t enough. Perusing the Food & Drug Administration’s warning letters online repository yields example after example of businesses cited for “Failure to follow procedures...". Businesses must provide employees with relevant SOPs and follow up with training and evaluation to ensure knowledge and consistent application.

Small and new business owners and large corporations alike may fall prey to the same misstep. Launching and managing a business can consume all available time and resources. Factor in recruiting and hiring new staff while securing vendors, equipment, brick and mortar space, operating software, website design, and marketing and there’s very little time to focus on what might seem like the nice-to-haves. Katie Weaver-Johnson’s article, 10 Reasons for Ongoing Policy and Procedure Management, outlines a comprehensive list detailing the reasons SOPs matter to business leaders. Lists, like this, can be distilled to four core elements:

1. Organizational goals, strategy, risks, and analysis
2. Safety and quality control
3. Performance management
4. Emergency preparedness

Whether a business owns the task of creating, vetting, and implementing SOPs on its own, or engages external support, guidelines exist to create a roadmap to completion.

1. Create a manual—complete with introduction—that identifies every procedure, uses easy to understand language, and supports text with flow charts and visuals.
2. Explain what the user can expect to gain and how best to use the manual as their resource tool.
3. Start with one procedure at a time and list the associated tasks. Upon completion, capture and list detailed steps for each task. Review and check for gaps. Each procedure should cover concisely all instructions necessary to successfully complete the procedure from beginning to end.
4. Vet the procedure. Tap super users or those most familiar with the procedure to review and provide feedback. Additionally, assign a new employee to complete the procedure using only the steps provided. Both viewpoints may offer important data not otherwise available.
5. Gather feedback and revise the procedure. Another review round may be necessary prior to finalizing.
6. Follow Steps 3-5 for each procedure.
7. Compile all completed procedures and bind into a Standard Operating Procedures Manual. Include a cover with the manual name and date/revision dates, a table of contents, the introduction, and the procedures per the table of contents.
8. Distribute copies and encourage regular feedback.[1]

But it doesn’t stop there. There are two components to consider and complete: One, is to identify and tie metrics[2] to procedures. In so doing, the procedure--and those responsible for executing it—can be measured and evaluated. Establishing this mechanism to gather data informs performance and allows for optimization before it’s too late to respond.

​For example, a business might want to track their Customer Churn Rate. This metric indicates the percentage of customers that either fail to make a repeat purchase or discontinue their patronage altogether. It’s always less expensive to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. Monitoring churn yields information to help identify actions necessary to increase customer retention rates.[3] Perhaps customer service is to blame. Creating a customer service program complete with training and articulated customer service standards is less expensive than constantly acquiring new customers.

Second, businesses often follow the ‘one and done’ philosophy after implementing their SOPs. SOPs represent living documents that grow and change as the business grows and changes. A best practice is to schedule updates based on the business life cycle. This mitigates forgetting or overlooking a document that is key to a business’s success and longevity.

Protecting customers, business assets, brand, and future growth relies on a solid strategy rooted in SOPs. Regina could have avoided the dragon next door by creating and implementing a set of SOPs that held her vendors accountable to detailed safety measures, tracked her customers’ purchases, captured her customer’s contact information in a CRM, and outlined emergency procedures for just such an occasion.


[1] How Do I Write a Standard Operations Procedures Manual? By Kristie Lorette

[2] Various key performance indicators (KPIs) serve as useful metrics to evaluate procedures and employees. For a list of possible KPIs, review Ted Jackson’s 18 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Examples Defined.

[3] For more information on Customer Churn rate, visit Churn Rate 101.

It started like a perfect project. The company had realized the huge cost of non-productive time for sales new hires and the crippling cost of their high turnover. Sales leaders had finally decided to dedicate funds and resources to developing a formal new hire onboarding program. A team was assembled, goals set, KPIs created and the needs analysis kicked off. Since new hires were managed by the sales managers, it made sense to gather some top sales managers and use their experience to develop the exit skills required of a new hire. A few fact-finding sessions were held and in short order, the program had a needs list signed off by senior management and curriculum development duly churned out the Quick-Start Program.

Quick-Start began with an in-depth review of compensation spreadsheets, benefits information, and a quick peek at the performance review system (the sales managers had all agreed that new hires had endless questions for them in these areas). Next came working sessions with the CRM tool to build confidence in entering their opportunity information. Then a special instructor came into the class to teach the complex order entry system (sales managers specifically said this should be covered in class because many salespeople needed help navigating the system whenever a sale was made). The last instructor-led session was “cold-calling” so the sales reps could immediately start calling and become productive.

Of course, their training wasn’t complete with just the instructor-led session. They completed hours of online product training courses, and webinars with trainers at different times through the week, and each section was signed off by the sales manager as completed as new salespeople demonstrated the skills.

After a year of this perfectly conceived and designed program, the results were gathered. 100% of sales new-hires completed all steps of the program, as indicated by sales manager sign-offs of mandatory checkpoints along the way. That was the only good news. Sales Productivity dropped 45% for the first six months of the new hire’s career and new hire turnover increased by 200%. The Quick-Start Program was a dismal failure.

Why did it fail? It shares common failures with many unsuccessful onboarding programs.

1.  It taught irrelevant information. The sales managers wanted benefits and compensation information included in the training program so they didn’t have to review it with their new hires. But this information changes frequently and can be very specific to individuals. It needed to be addressed by the sales manager and HR, not in a training class. Don’t confuse onboarding with orientation.
2. It taught the wrong information at the wrong time. Teaching a new hire how to navigate a complex order processing system that even veteran salespeople needed help with was not a good decision. When (and if) the rep made a sale, the sales manager would be more than happy to help them get it in the system and get the sale credited. All the complex instructions would be long forgotten by the time they actually could use the information. New hires don’t need to see the Performance Review System, they may never get to see it. All they need is their KPIs and performance expectations.
3. It taught disconnected skills. The CRM tool should have been taught in conjunction with the cold calling skills, because the tool is used in the skill and there are online prompts that help the new salesperson.
4. The exit skills did not focus on the KPIs. The KPIs were sales rep productivity and turnover. Any exit skill that did not increase productivity should have been eliminated from the course. The course should have opened and closed with strong selling skills, from finding leads to closing.
5. It used the wrong teaching methods for skills needed. It’s become common to transition as many courses as possible to elearning, but in this case, salespeople need to see and use the products they were selling to be able to communicate to the client. Loading their first few months with the company with a slew of disconnected elearning courses, with no instructor support, was a recipe for failure.
6. Subjective milestones markers were used. Because each milestone achievement was a mandatory sign-off for the sales manager, it encouraged them to sign off to get the message out of their workflow. But salespeople did not actually demonstrate the skills. There needs to be objective skills assessment.

The SHRM Foundation’s research[1] into the field tells us that up to 20% of staff turnover within the first 45 days of employment is primarily due to bad onboarding. Careerbuilder research reveals that more than 36% of companies lack a structured onboarding program.[2] And ATD reports that 49% of employers with structured programs said their employees were more engaged and had lower turnover. [3] It’s clear the data demonstrates a good onboarding program can be of tremendous impact, so what are the key areas that make or break a program?

1. The program should quickly and effectively give any newly hired employee the bare minimum they need to become productive. Let all the nice-to-have stuff wait until they get their feet wet and are comfortable performing their jobs.
2. Needs analysis should be based on the observed functions of the job, not what a manager wants training to do for them.
3. Give new hires the skills they need in the order in which they will need them and a clear understanding of their responsibilities.
4. Make sure that they demonstrate (to a learning professional) that they have mastered key skills as they move through the program.
5. Provide targeted feedback with structured plans for improvement.
6. Don’t confuse orientation (an introduction to the culture and company) with onboarding (how to do my job).

Employers are wise to consider how onboarding could bring engaged, productive employees into the workforce (and keep them there!).


[1]https://www.shrm.org/foundation/ourwork/initiatives/resources-from-past-initiatives/Documents/Onboarding%20New%20Employees.pdf
[2]http://press.careerbuilder.com/2017-05-11-Thirty-Six-Percent-of-Employers-Lack-a-Structured-Onboarding-Process-for-New-Employees-According-to-New-CareerBuilder-Survey
[3] https://www.td.org/Publications/Magazines/TD/TD-Archive/2017/08/Intelligence-Turned-Off-from-Onboarding