5 Tips for Creating Effective Administrative Procedures
Creating administrative procedures into an admin binder or shared drive folder may not be one of the most glamorous jobs within the office. But it is a crucial one both for staff working full time within the business and for anyone called in to help out. Having clearly defined processes have a number of benefits including ensuring consistent approaches and saving time. But how do you create effective administration procedures?
1. Identify what procedures are needed
The first step is often the longest one – deciding what procedures are needed based on the tasks that are performed around the office. You want to aim to find all the admin processes that are used, even if they are used once a month or once a year. You can categorise them by frequency within the admin binder or shared folder but at least they will be featured.
Look at what people do and make a list of these processes that you can then use to start building out a procedure around how it is done.
2. Create a template
Creating a template is a good step to ensure all of your procedures take the same format. It also means if you need to add more procedures at a later date, you can simply take up the template again and put it into use once more. There are lots of blank templates available on the internet but making your own is also very simple. Once it is created, keep a few blank copies in the back of the admin binder as well as noting down where the digital copy is stored.
3. Break down the process
Once you know what processes you need to include in the binder, it is time to start breaking down each process to create a series of steps that should be followed. An example might involve the incoming mail:
● Bills, bank statement and invoices as well as payments received in the mail are sent to
accounting
● Trade magazines and any flyers sent to marketing
● Resumes and other potential employee contact sent to HR
● Any contracts or legal paperwork send to legal
You could then further break down the processes into what should happen with different types of mail within the different departments. For example, bank statements would need to be date stamped with the date received then checked for any issues and filed in the appropriate accounting
binder.
It is also worth noting on the procedure who is the person responsible for the particular outcome – e.g. John Smith in accounting or Jane Jones in marketing. This means if there are any queries about the process, admin staff can speak directly to that person.
4. Keep it simple and to the point
An admin binder doesn’t need to be a nicely written piece of content worthy of a place on the company blog. Like many things you will learn when you take Office Admin Courses in London, the aim of the binder is to get across the most important information in the quickest and easier format to allow people to act on it. That means don’t worry about writing sentences but instead use commands and make use of bullet points and headings to make it easy to skim to the relevant section.
5. Test the procedures
Putting something that you do into writing can be strange so the best way to see if it has worked is to get someone to test the procedure. Pick someone who wouldn’t normally do this particular process to see if they can do it correctly just by following the instructions in the binder. And get them to tell you if there is anything else needed to make it a complete and simple procedure.
