Do you feel overwhelmed by the thought of training new employees? Are you looking for ways to streamline your business processes and save time?
In Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell offers a solution: creating operating manuals for your company’s processes. He details how to create a training manual that can help you take a hands-off approach to employee training while maintaining quality standards.
Read on to discover Martell’s four-step process for creating effective training manuals, and learn how to apply these principles to your personal life as well.
How to Create a Training Manual
Martell writes that you can save time when running your business by creating operating manuals for all of your company’s processes. These manuals allow you to take a hands-off approach to training your employees, saving you time while maintaining quality standards.
Martell explains how to create a training manual by following four steps.
1. Create training videos for the task you want others to do. Record yourself doing the task three separate times while verbally explaining your actions. By making several recordings for your trainee to watch, you can cover any variations in how the task might be done.
2. Create step-by-step instructions. Write a simple bulleted list of key steps for each task. This ensures employees are clear on everything that needs to be accomplished. For instance, if you’re training an employee to handle customer complaints, your list might include greeting the customer courteously, asking about the issue, apologizing for the inconvenience, solving the problem, and following up with the customer to confirm their issue has been resolved.
3. Specify how often the task should be done. Define when and how often each task should be completed.
4. Create a checklist of essential tasks. Include every must-do action for each task. This ensures consistency in quality and approach.
Martell writes that, once you’ve created operating manuals for various elements, you should have new hires read them and watch all related training videos.
| Create Operating Manuals for Your Life Creating operating manuals for your company frees up your time, so why not create them for your life? In Getting Things Done, David Allen recommends a work-life management system he created to manage your tasks efficiently and relieve mental clutter. Let’s look at how you can take the principles of the GTD system and apply them to your everyday life, just as you would with an operating manual for your company: First, both Allen’s GTD and Martell’s method highlight the value of recording every task. Allen suggests you ”capture” everything—put every task and idea onto an external management system (one that’s outside your memory). Use various “containers” to put your captured ideas into, such as paper notebooks, emails, or digital/audio note-taking systems or apps. Allen also recommends breaking down the steps to accomplishing a task: Determine everything that needs to happen for a task to be successful, sort those elements into priorities and sequences, and then add in necessary details. However, he suggests you more importantly identify all next actions for tasks that are possible to pursue now. For example, if an item says “clean the garage,” but there’s an old refrigerator taking up space that you want to offer to a friend, your next action is to ask your friend if they want the appliance. Finally, both Allen and Martell recommend making checklists to declutter your mind. In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande provides some tips for creating an effective checklist. First, clearly define when the checklist should be consulted. Then decide whether the checklist should be used after people perform the job (to make sure all items are completed) or while they work (checking off each task as they go). Gawande suggests you make the checklist nine items or fewer, since long checklists run the risk of people skipping or missing steps. Once you’ve created a checklist, test it by having people apply it in the real world and provide feedback. |
