Five techniques to minimize and reduce documents in your management system is
what we're talking about in this video. If you've come into an organization
that's overwhelmed with documents thousands of policies and procedures and
the task for you seems to be massively overwhelming in terms of what you need
to do to maintain this stuff I'm going to take you through my five techniques
to reduce the number of documents that you've got to really get the most value
out of what gets written down or what gets recorded for your management system.
Let's go through my five techniques to minimize and reduce documents in your
management system. If you've come into this organization you're a little bit
overwhelmed off you've been given the responsibility for your management
system and there's tons of documents lots of policies procedures and you just
don't know what to update what to look at and what to maintain the first
technique is to look at the type of media that's going to be the most
effective for you to produce and so I'm a very strong advocate for the use of
things like video and audio visual techniques to actually communicate
messages and I see that as being a really efficient way to do something. You
will get better engagement better compliance and it's going to make your
life much much easier in the future. Technique number two is about keeping
records and getting engagement, can you use a chat group or closed forum group
to communicate and absorb information in your organization? Now here at Best
Practice we have seen higher, much much higher levels of engagement and
absorption of information and ultimately compliance which is gonna again make
your life easier and you haven't got at least documents to update. Technique
number three, acknowledge competency high level of skills and qualifications and
experience low level of documents low level of skills qualification then
experience like no skills higher level of step-by-step instructions. I see in
the preparation of documents lots of how-to steps, how to do step
A,B,C,D,E,F,G but what the documents often fail to acknowledge is the level of
competency, skills and training, required by the incumbent of that position and so
you might have very highly skilled and qualified people in a position but then
you write them a step by step how to and they don't read it
they don't follow it, you're paying them a lot of money with lots of
qualifications to figure things out, they don't need a higher level of detail in
their documents and policies. Now technique number four is really
interesting, if you want to do a little google search after this video don't
have a look at the hierarchy of control it's been used for many years in OH&S
but I think it applies everywhere in business in controlling risk. When we
look at the hierarchy of control policies and procedures are at the
bottom they're the least effective method to control risk and influence
people in the business. Technique number four is really thinking about can I
engineer this process instead of writing down the steps so that the process flows
the same every time. Considering can you engineer out in your
organization a process that might be fraught with autonomy, where we've tried
to use a procedure to control steps that people follow and instead you could now
consider using software to support how the business runs so that the steps are
mandatory, they're mandatory fields and manager information and it forces
organizations to follow that set routine process. Technique number five is
focusing on outcomes. What's the outcome you want from people? Now the steps that
you want them to follow might be documented in a procedure but can you
think about the outcome, what's the actual outcome rather than the
individual steps you want them to follow and so if you can think about the
outcomes, measure the outcomes, track the outcomes, have people talk about the
outcomes they're setting out to achieve again you can minimize what gets written
down by changing your focus to let's focus on outcomes, don't worry about the
procedures, let's just ensure we're getting to the outcomes and if there's
something that's not right about that outcome someone's getting something
wrong or focus on asking them the question, how could you improve what you
do to get this agree the outcome that we need? Whether it's customer service or
OH&S or safety. So to recap now our five techniques are
use effective media that everyone loves to consume. Recording video you can
record it faster than you can type a procedure, you can then post that video
in your private secret Facebook group which is giving people instruction and
guidance on what to do. Facebook will then show you who's seen, it that'll be
your training record your training register, your attendance
register there might be some evidence you need to keep for a quality assurance
audit and more importantly instead of having the hard copy that you've got a
store or the server that you've gotta put on it, Facebook puts that up in the cloud
and keeps it for you to go back and look at and check on and you can delete it,
you can add it, delete it and you can change it as you need to, re-record it
and that's part of all of your updating and refreshing the information but it's
going to be there in the feed on the timeline for people to consume when they
can in their time when you want them to digest it. Technique number three
acknowledge competency higher level of skills and qualifications and experience
low level of documents low level of skills qualifications and experience
like no skills higher level of step-by-step instructions but choose the
media for those people. Technique number four is can you engineer your process
can you have a software package to support your processes and what people
need to do that gives them guidance on the next step and consolidates
information and technique number five is focusing on outcomes, focusing on success
factors, focusing on the thing that we're hoping to achieve that previously the
procedure said step one to three. Now with all of that in place you'll have
and I'll guarantee it an organization that is communicating, an organization
with people consuming and absorbing information and guidance, you'll have an
organization that's simplified, it's not wasting money on stressing about
updating documents and revision numbers and procedures and dates and all that
crazy stuff, a lot less typing and a lot more communicating and effectively
communicating with people. Now if you want some more detail in terms of how to
go about doing this what are the absolute essential things that you need
we've got a free checklist that you can download for quality, safety, environment
and information security on our website links below in the description, grab
yourself a copy of that checklist go through the checklist do your own little
gap analysis and I'll see you right here next time on best practice TV bye for now.