More often than not, we go through our day-to-day work not really thinking about the steps we take to do simple tasks or how those simple tasks ultimately make up the major projects we complete as a team. But what happens when somebody on your team is sick or leaves the company? Will somebody be able to pick up the slack right away or will productivity slow down? Just like that, those little involuntary steps become incredibly important because they symbolize continuity and productivity.

Rea’s retirement plan services team recently learned just how important processes are to their team and to the firm – and to our clients. In fact, they took a lot of time going through their processes and, for their efforts, the team earned certification by the Center for Fiduciary Excellence as adhering to The American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries Standard of Practice for Retirement Plan Service Providers. It’s a mouthful, but it’s kind of a big deal. In fact, there are only 48 CEFEX-certified firms in the country and only 2 in the entire state of Ohio!

Brigette Lafferty, a manager on Rea’s retirement plan services team, was central to her team’s recent process documentation efforts. On this episode of unsuitable, she shares how process documentation can drive value across all businesses and what you can do to start your own process documentation plan.

Why should business owners care about process documentation?

Process documentation provides a detailed description of how to complete any given business process. It is used as a guide to help employees at all levels, including decision makers and stakeholders, quickly understand company processes.

It may not seem important when everything is running smoothly, or a process may seem too simple to bother, but when someone doesn’t know how to perform a task because the documentation doesn’t exist and productivity starts to go down, it may already be too late to address the problem – and on the flip side, improving efficiency leads to greater profitability, an increase in company value, and higher employee retention.

If you don’t have your processes documented, you will be interested in these other topics discussed in this episode:

• What are the business benefits of process documentation?
• What tasks should organizations document and how does one document them?
• How to start your own process documentation strategy.

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