In a previous blog post, I provided three tips to engaging a Virtual Assistant. In this article, I advised that the third tip was to ensure you have processes or procedures (and even branding info) in place to hand over to your VA so they could get up to speed with supporting you and your business.
Setting up this documentation will ensure that who you outsource to is:
- More efficient and confident in performing their work,
- Gives clarity in the work that needs to be performed,
- Reduces training time and costs, and
- Empower the people who are supporting you.
So have you completed this step at all?
You do these tasks yourself that it is second nature, but to effectively hand over to someone else to take the reigns for you and lighten your workload, it pays to have some sort of documentation in place.
NOW DON’T FREAK OUT!
This documentation does not have to be war and peace to create or in length! It could be as simple dot points or a video.
The next time you commence a task – grab your preferred method of taking notes eg: a dedicated notebook and jot down the basic outline of what you are doing.
There are many ways in which you can document your processes or procedures. And as humans, we all learn in a variety of different methods (think visual, auditory, kinesthetic and reading/writing learners), it can help to utilise a combination of methods to document….such as:
- Steps or dot points
- Images
- Video (try using something like Loom to record the task being completed)
- Show and tell
- Workflow or flowchart
This will make it easier to show others how tasks are completed in your.
Not sure what tasks need to be documented?
Start by:
- Writing down the tasks that you want to outsource
- Reviewing what documentation you currently have (and ensuring it’s in one easy to find location)
- Where the gaps are in what documentation you don’t have – start the next time you perform the task
Completing this documentation is also the first step in being able to scale and grow your business.
And remember, engaging a VA like me, also means that I can and will update your existing processes or procedures or if you don’t have any…create one for you 😉
Want to get started with documenting your processes? Be sure to Call on Jo.
Until next time 😊
Jo
