Metrics Start with Data

“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.”          – William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

To really understand your business you have to collect data about your business and then transform that data into meaningful information.  Data itself is not information.  Finding trends, patterns, or grouping the data is how you produce information.

Do Your Metrics Have Patterns or Trends?

Trends are good things if they are planned for or a result of actions you initiated.  Good or bad Trends that you have no idea why they are happening are a bad thing and require investigation.  Yes, even good trends require investigation.  Trends that magically rise can also magically fall.  Businesses don’t run on magic.

Do your trends suggest it’s time to adjust your targets?  KPIs which are being met consistently for 90 days or more can be an opportunity to raise your targets to reach higher goals.

Alternatively, metrics you are failing to meet for 90 days or more require action — corrective action.  If you are not sure where to start taking action, consider breaking your problem metric into its components to isolate the underlying causes.

On Time Delivery Process Flow

Let’s say you have a problem with On Time Delivery (OTD), which is very common in any business.  This means you are having trouble getting product to your customer as requested.  You can measure OTD as the percentage of orders that ship on time.

If your OTD goal is 99% and your actual OTD is 82% then you are failing to ship 17% of your orders on time.  But the 82% number does not explain a lot because there are five different elements that each can cause some of the delay: suppliers, purchasing, warehouse, manufacturing, and shipping.

You need to measure what the OTD performance is for each element and combine them together to understand where the 82% is coming from.  If each element ranges from 91% to 99% then every area is doing pretty good, right?  So where do you focus?

• 91% Supplier OTD
• 96% Purchasing OTD
• 97% Warehouse OTD
• 98% Manufacturing OTD
• 99% Shipping OTD

Rolled Yield = 91% x 96% x 97% x 98% x 99%   or 82.2%

It is not an addition problem.  The probability of success of each element is multiplied with each other to get a probable outcome for the chain.  This means that you are only as strong as your weakest link.

When we roll the yield together it now becomes pretty obvious where the 82% comes from and where we need to focus.  Suppliers are on time 91% of the time.  If we work on supplier OTD and get it up to 99% then the rolled yield rises to 89%, which is 40% of the problem solved.

In fact, even if every element was on time 99% of the time, the rolled yield would still only be 95%, which means that the only way to get 100% OTD is if every element is at 100%.  Zero defects is the only solution to 100% OTD.  But you start with the biggest OTD problem, suppliers, and then continuously improve the others over time.  This is what business process management is all about.

Are Your Corrective Actions Impacting Your Trends?

Your corrective action should be improving your results; otherwise you are not working on the right things – the root causes.  Of course you may be faced with an intractable problem at some point in time.  So if you are unable to change the trend with a corrective action, then is it a metric you should even track?  If it is then you need to continue to break the process down into smaller elements and measure each one until you find a point you can leverage.  That is your root cause.

Are Your Metrics Strategic?

Where did your metrics come from in the first place? Your metrics should be linked to your organizational strategy, your quality objectives, and your mission/vision/policy statements.   This is how your policy deployment process is supposed to work.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen this way.  Instead you may end up with too many metrics or not enough of the right metrics.

Too many metrics on your dashboard causes a lot of confusion.  Employees can’t focus on too many things at once. When you have too many KPIs then you have to ask yourself “are the metrics providing meaningful data?”  You may be burying the right metrics with a lot of other metrics that are just noise to the process.

When this happens you have to get back to first principles.  What is the mission/vision/policy you are trying to realize?  Consider breaking down the metrics to the ones that matter.  If you have a very lean, stable manufacturing process that is balanced with even flow, then you should be at 100% OTD already.  This is easy, just measure supplier performance because the rest drops out.

Business dashboards, balanced scorecards, or daily flash reports should change over time as a result of effective corrective actions that improve your metrics.  Plan on revising your business performance scoreboard six or seven times before it is contains meaningful and measurable Key Performance Indicators or metrics.  If your management dashboard is not evolving over time, then don’t be afraid to change the scorecard you are using.  If you are serious about your mission, vision, and policies then remember, what gets measured gets managed.

Download sample policy and procedure templates in MS Word as a starting point to developing your won well-defined processes documentation.

The post KPI Business Metrics – Do They Work? appeared first on Bizmanualz.

Does Management Use Business Process Management?

From the name of it, BPM sounds like a management discipline.  Yet, when we sit down to document business processes within an organization who is involved?  Typically it is not management or at least not anyone from upper management.

Management takes the approach that the process is static.  Therefore, just have the employees in the process document what they do into procedures.  Yes these are the process procedures, but without management’s involvement what has really been written are work instructions and not procedures.

Management is responsible for company strategy.  Policies are then created to support that strategy.  So management is responsible for translating policy into actions (i.e. policy deployment).

Your procedures should describe a business process in enough detail so that every employee can manage their own process effectively.  Effectiveness is a function of how well they achieve the strategy.  So in order for employees to deliver on management’s strategy, they need to know what the strategy is in terms of their own process results.  It is not enough for an employee to count transactions or hours worked, your employees must account for what was produced or accomplished and then compare those process results to the expected process results that management’s strategy planned.

Policy Deployment

This means, the strategy deployment process must translate management strategy into policies that the workers can use to develop process procedures and process actions (work instructions).  Management is responsible for half of the process – strategy and policy.  Management is also responsible for reviewing process results against strategic objectives and taking action on unplanned results.

Management Process Actions

Changing process results requires a change to the system design.  It is not about working harder.  It is about working smarter.  Management provides resources for change.  Management is responsible for the strategy and business policy.  So management must be involved in BPM change management.

Who is Documenting Your Business Processes?

IT processes are analyzed and developed by systems analysts.  In manufacturing it might be a quality or manufacturing engineer.  These two areas have clearly defined roles to assign your business process management too.  Why is that?

For many people in business, Process Management focuses on the production and distribution of goods, services, and information.  In other words, it is a production, operations, or IT function.    But the concept of process management goes beyond supply chain management, information systems, or manufacturing operations.

Business processes include sales & marketing, accounting, human resources and the rest of the organization.  All business processes are part of a system of processes that interact to ensure orders are turned into cash.  All business processes must be aligned with the organization and tie back into strategy, the province of senior management’s strategy deployment process.

Business Process Documentation

When you first ask your employees to document business processes you end up with policies and procedures, work instructions, and forms describing the work that employees perform.  It tends to be very transaction oriented and focused on the work.

When you ask your employees to look at your business as a series of processes, then you end up with process maps, process interaction diagrams, and subject matter experts involved.  The process documentation is better, focused on the process, but it is still missing how each process interacts with the other in a system of processes and delivering the strategic results.

But if you really want your employees to manage their business processes, then you will need Key Performance Indicators (KPI), measures for strategy attainment, and a workforce team with upper management involved as a member of that team ensuring that business processes are managed for results.  Isn’t that what business process management is all about — management managing and delivering results?

Download free samples of department policies and procedures in Microsoft Word templates.

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The plan for a process audit is to start out with some general process audit questions in order to determine what the scope of the process is, what the purpose of the process is, and how the process operates.  Now that we understand what the definition of the process is, we can focus on process management audit questions.  Then later we can drill down into product realization specific audit questions.

General Process Audit Questions

When auditing a business process it is important to determine how much process planning has gone into the creation of the process and the system of processes that it belongs to.  Many business appear to throw their business processes together with so little planning that it is no wonder why it is so hard to achieve planned results.

Business process planning means that each element of the process has been determined.  As an auditor we want to understand how much the process participants (employees) understand about their process.  Using SIPOC + PDCA is a good place to start.  The first two questions revolve around process definition.

1. (ISO Clause 4.1) Describe the business process you operate and how it relates to the other processes needed for the quality management system?  (i.e. Turtle Diagram, Process Map, flow diagram, other)

SIPOC

i.      What (S) Suppliers do you have for your process?

ii.      What (I) Inputs are needed for your process? (materials, information)

iii.      What (P) Process steps transform the inputs into outputs?

iv.      What (O) Outputs result from your process?

v.      What (C)Customers receive outputs from your process?

PDCA-SIPOC Overlap

PDCA

i.      (P) Plan: What Policies, procedures, forms, records and other information have been developed for your process?

ii.      (D) Do: What data do you monitor or collect?
(8.3) What is a process defect or nonconformance? How is it documented?

iii.   (C) Check: What criteria, objectives, KPIs, or target requirements do you compare to the data?
(8.4) How do you analyze your process data?

iv.      (A) Act: What actions are taken to (8.5.2) correct or (8.5.3) prevent process defects, waste or nonconformances from occurring?

2. (ISO Clause 4.2) How are these documents and records controlled?

Process Management Audit Questions

A well-defined process will have answers to all of your SIPOC and PDCA questions.  Next we want to understand how the process we are assessing relates to other processes within a system of processes – your process system.  The linkages within an ISO system stem from your quality policy and quality objectives, which are two key results of your management commitment. The next seven questions revolve around process system management.

3. (ISO Clause 5.3) What is your company Quality Policy?

4. (ISO Clause 5.4) What are your company Quality Objectives?

i. How do your process objectives relate to your quality objectives?

ii. How often are your company quality policy and objectives reviewed?

5. (ISO Clause 6.2) What skills and trainingare necessary to operate this process?

i. (6.2.2e) Where are the training records for your process?

6. (ISO Clause 6.4) What kind of safety, security, and environmental precautions do you use at the company?

7. (ISO Clause 8.2) How do you know your customer is satisfied with your process outputs?

8. (ISO Clause 8.4) Can you describe the latest analysis of your process and systems data?

9. (ISO Clause 8.5) How do you know your corrective and preventative action process is working?

Product Realization Specific Audit Questions

An effective process management system is obviously well managed; otherwise it would not be effective.  Next we drill down into manufacturing (or service) specific questions to understand what the production system looks like.  The last six questions revolve around product realization or manufacturing management.

10. (ISO Clause 7.2) What are the customer requirements for an order that moves through your process system?

11. (ISO Clause 7.1) What is a process system defect or nonconformance?

i. How do you test for process system defects and make sure nonconformances don’t happen?

12. (ISO Clause 6.3) What equipment do you use to operate this process?

i. (7.6) How is it calibrated?

ii. What do you do if you find it is out of calibration?

13. (ISO Clause 7.5) What process controls are in place to make sure nonconformances don’t happen?

14. (ISO Clause 7.3) How do you use design input, review, verification, validation, and change records to ensure your process system outputs meet requirements?

15. (ISO Clause 7.4) How do you communicate your process input needs and/or problem materials to purchasing?

The PDCA process approach is all around us.  It is used for business process planning, BPM, and to determine the ability of the process system to achieve planned results — process effectiveness.  We do this using a process audit, which starts with general process audit questions, expands to process management audit questions, and ends by drilling down into product realization specific audit questions.  ISO process auditing is all about process effectiveness and the ability of the process system to achieve planned results.

Download free examples of policies and procedures from each policy and procedure department manual.  Examine 19 different samples to see how easy it is to use Bizmanualz pre-written templates.  Or call to inquire about ISO Auditing, ISO Consulting, or ISO Training Services for your organization.

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What is The Process Approach?

A well defined business process is made up of a series of steps used to transform inputs into outputs.  This business process transformation is depicted using a SIPOC diagram (see graphic).

SIPOC and PDCA

SIPOC PDCA Diagram

The SIPOC is an acronym for Supplier (S), Inputs (I), Process (P), Outputs (O), and Customer (C).  Every input to your process has a supplier that provides it to the process.  Your business process converts the inputs into an output for a customer.

The graphic also has a red “feedback” line from the customer back to the process, which we use to compare the feedback to the processes objectives.  Your customer’s feedback is critical to developing a controlled process.  Without feedback and criteria you end up creating a “ballistic process” instead of a controlled process.

Ballistic processes blindly transform inputs into outputs.  By adding process criteria, targets or objectives with feedback you transform a ballistic process into a controlled process.  The goal of managing your business processes is to have controlled processes that are designed to achieve your strategy.  Process feedback is what we measure, monitor and take action on to achieve control.  Process criteria are what we compare the feedback to for that control.

PDCA and the Process Approach

PDCA is an acronym for Plan, Do, Check, Act.  If we overlay the “P” of PDCA with the “P” of the SIPOC diagram we get an easy graphical acronym for all of the elements that need to be present to ensure a complete business process management definition.

PDCA-SIPOC Overlap

The PDCA elements remind us that business processes need Plans (criteria), along with Doing (feedback data), an important Check step (comparison of feedback to the criteria), and finally Actions that are derived from the feedback we receive and how close we are to the criteria.  The action step provides the needed correction to demonstrate the process is under control.

The Business Process Management Process Approach

Add the two together and the SIPOC + PDCA acronyms make a complete set that reminds us of all of the elements that are needed to demonstrate that business processes are managed.  The process approach to BPM is all about creating controlled processes using PDCA and SIPOC to define, measure, monitor and control.  That is business process management in action.

Download free examples of policies and procedures from each policy and procedure department manual.  Examine 19 different samples to see how easy it is to use Bizmanualz pre-written templates.

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Business Process Management (BMP) Defined

Managing business processes requires a complete understanding of the process.  How are your processes determined, defined, and communicated?  How are your processes monitored, measured, and controlled to deliver planned results?  When an auditor comes in to assess your business process management they are looking for four things.

1. Are company processes defined?
2. Are organizational processes monitored?
3. Are workplace processes measured?
4. Are your business processes controlled?

Company Process Definitions

Business Processes

Your company processes can be defined using a number of methods.  The simplest is to use a process map to depict your main business processes, the sequence and interaction of each process step in a business process, or to communicate the process conversion steps that occur to turn the process inputs into outputs.  A well defined process means to identify the main elements of the process: the process owner, process inputs & outputs, key process steps, and criteria, measures or requirements.  When we are talking about PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), process definition is part of the (P) planning step.

Organizational Process Monitoring

Just having a process defined is great but, your process is intended to produce a result too.  Your shipping process is intended to distribute your products to your customers.  Someone needs to monitor the process to make sure that your products are getting to your customers.  Usually this is the process owner or somebody in management.  Process monitoring ensures the process produces outputs, but it may not ensure that the process produces good output or achieves the planned results.  Process monitoring is part of the (D) Doing step in PDCA.

Workplace Process Measures

To achieve planned results you must measure the process and take actions to move wayward processes into producing good outputs.  What does “producing good outputs” mean?  It means you must measure the right stuff.  Monitoring your processes is important but if you don’t measure the right things then you may not get the right results either.  Measuring requires that you have a target or goal defined.  Common goals include On Time Delivery, % order complete and accurate order fill rates. Measuring is all about comparing your collected data to the target.  Process measures are part of the (C) Check step in PDCA.

Business Processes Control

Are your processes effective?  Process control is all about taking action to ensure your process is effective and achieving planned results.  This means you have to have a defined process in place that establishes that  the process is monitored, your process is measured against a target, and you have the ability to take action to correct your process from producing bad results.

Process control is the goal of any process measurement activity.  It is the focus of the process approach of the ISO 9001:2008 quality standard.  Process control is part of the (A) Act step in PDCA.  If you are intent on real business process management, then business process control is what it is all about.

Making Business Process Management Easier

Many business processes are poorly defined, but this can be fixed.  Start by creating process maps for all of your core business process.   Creating process maps is the first step to improving your business process management.

Most business do not do a very good job of monitoring their processes.  Do you know what all the defects are that can and do occur with your core business processes?  Using your process maps to identify critical data to monitor is the next step in your business process improvement journey.

If most businesses do not have process maps and do not monitor their processes, then how did they determine the measures for their business?  And if the measures do not come from your process maps and your monitoring, then what kind of a measure is it?  Predominately lagging measure of success like revenue, profit, or inventory turns.  What you need are some leading indicators of success like new customer formation, repeat business (which leads to lifetime customer value), or sales cycle closing time.

Your PDCA cycle culminates in taking appropriate action, but what’s appropriate is relative to the measure of success you are following.  Follow the wrong measures and your perspective of appropriate actions changes.  Finding measures to your business is a lot easier once you have followed a PDCA path of define processes, monitoring processes, and then measuring your processes.

Controlled Business Process Management

The whole journey builds on itself and requires that you follow each step.  Skipping steps may feel like you are saving valuable management time but in reality, you will end up following measures that will lead you to take less appropriate actions over time and thus cost you more in the long run.  What’s hard about business process management is understanding what appropriate actions are that you need to take to correct your processes back towards achieving planned results.

Don’t skip steps.  Plan, Do Check, and Act appropriately.  Achieve planned results.  That’s the formula for business process success.  Download free sample policies and procedures to see how it’s done.  Then order department policies and procedures that you need to improve business process results in your company.

The post What is Business Process Management? appeared first on Bizmanualz.

Procedure Writing

The policy writer must try to put themselves into the position of the users at all times.  It is a good idea to develop manual review criteria, to make sure your procedure document are consistent and correct. While developing policy and procedure statements, some general guidelines for the procedure writer to keep in mind are:

1. Explain new or unusual terms the first time they are used or in the definitions section of the statement.
2. Avoid jargon wherever possible, especially when training new employees.
3. Avoid unneeded words.
4. Avoid complex writing.  If the writer’s vocabulary is unusually large or if they write using complex sentence structures, the writing may be at too high a level for many of the users.  Understanding is far more important than the correctness of the language.
5. Use active verbs instead of passive phrases.
6. Write the way you speak.  Use words and phrases that you would normally use in expressing the same thought orally.

Sexism in Procedure Writing

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines “he” as used in the generic sense or when the sex of the person is unspecified.  However, many people will not accept “he” being used when referring to people in general.  There have been suggestions that the generic “he” be replaced with “he or she” and “him” with “him or her.”

Another recent method that is gaining acceptance is the switch to a plural pronoun with a singular subject such as “When someone orders their supplies, they will have to complete a …”

Often it is more practical for the writer to use generic nouns or by recasting sentences to include positions or titles (i.e., Applicant, Manager, Accountant, Driver, etc.) to eliminate the need for most sexism in writing of policy and procedure statements.

Number Usage in Your Procedures

Writing and development of procedures may often times include the frequent usage of numbers in the writing.  The following rules cover how numbers should be used in print.

1. Never begin a sentence with numbers.  “Fifty states have been admitted to the union” not “50 states …”
2. Spell numbers one through nine in words, 10 or larger in numerals.
3. Compound numbers such as fractions in numerals, for example 8 1/2″ X 11.”
4. When showing odds, use hyphens such as 4-to-1.
5. Decimals of less than one should be preceded by a zero, for example, 0.5 percent.
6. Dates: “the 1990s”
7. Spell % as percent.
8. Use numerals with times such as a.m. and p.m.

Organizing Your Procedure Ideas

To help the procedure writer formulate and organize ideas for developing and writing policy and procedure statements, it may be useful to outline the material to be covered.  Outlining is a fast and effective way to show a great amount of information in a concise, efficient manner with a minimum of writing.

To achieve well-written and easily understood policy and procedure statements that flow in a cohesive and logical form, your personnel should first outline their thoughts before beginning to write a statement.

When outlining a policy and procedure statement, the following areas should be defined:

1. What is the objective of the policy and procedure statement?
2. What is the Company’s policy on this matter?
3. Who does the business policy affect?

4.         When is the policy/procedure appropriate?

5.         How is the objective to be accomplished? This should include outlining major areas of your procedure in a step-by-step fashion in chronological order.

Procedure Outlining Technique

There are some basic standard rules for effective and consistent procedure outlining.  It may be helpful to briefly review a few of these that deal primarily with formatting.  These rules concern indentation and numbering.

Standard outline formatting is as follows:

I.

A.

1.

2.

a.

b.

B.

II.

There should always be at least two of each type of character.  For example, there should not be an I without a II, an A without a B, etc.

The four characters to mark each section level, Roman numerals, capital letters, Arabic numerals and lower case letters are followed by a period.  Line up the periods vertically for each type of character.  Thus, Roman numerals are shown:

I.

II.

Arabic numerals are lined up as follows:

5.

39.

By aligning the periods, the text is a pleasing, straight vertical line.  Indentation should be uniform, usually two to five spaces for each change in type of line.  The part of a single line carried to a second line should be indented the same number of spaces as the original part of the line.

Effective Policies and Procedures Manual

An effective policy procedure manual is clearly written, easily understood by all the employees in your organization, and establishes a foundation of business controls that comply with established regulations. Clarity and readability are more important than style, perfect grammar and a large vocabulary.  Download Free Sample Procedure Templates to see how easy it is to edit MS Word Templates to build your own policy and procedure management system.

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Business Policy Conveys Management’s Philosophy

Your workplace policies and procedures manual communicates your corporate vision and mission.  Individual business policies and appropriate standard operating procedures (SOP) outline steps for achieving your company’s objectives in your company’s style and format.   What is the difference between policies and procedures you may ask?

Business Policy

A definite course or method of action to guide and determine decisions; a guide to decision making under a given set of circumstances within the framework of corporate objectives, goals, and management philosophies. A policy may also be referred to as: a business rule, management philosophy, company mission, company culture, “the way it’s done around here”, a standard, a principle, and even a procedure (although a policy is different than a procedure).

Business Procedure

A particular way of accomplishing something; an established way of doing things; a series of steps that, when followed in a definite, regular order, ensure consistent results.  A procedure is also referred to as: a best practice, standard operating procedure (SOP), work instruction (although work instructions are different than procedures), business process documentation, guide (i.e. style guide), checklist, workflow, rule, or standard.

View Free Sample Procedure Templates

Business Policies Improve Communication

A well-drafted business policy and procedure manual serves to transform your Company’s business philosophy, objectives, and goals into results oriented actions.  A well‑designed policy manual is a valuable communication device for efficiently driving your business operations within every department and for reducing gaps that exist between departments.   Business policies and procedures build consistency into your business operations.  Many companies today are simplifying how their policies and procedures are communicated by putting them online using policy management software.

Office Procedures Reduce Employee Training Time

Policies and Procedures Documentation

Your office policy and procedure manual is a training guide for new employees and will also work for retraining current employees.  It will reduce issues that result from insufficient understanding or inconsistent approaches when employees change positions.  Company job descriptions act like a position policy.  Your procedures provide the detail that explains “how” an employee achieves what you defined in the employee’s job description.

Company Procedures Improve Employee Productivity

Well-developed policies and procedures speed up employee decision making and serve as an  authoritative source for answers to common company questions.  Properly documented company policies and procedures help with your compliance with statutes and regulations concerning your business (e.g., Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)), as well as industry standards (e.g., ISO, GAAP, ITIL) and guidelines.

Policies and Procedures Strengthen Business Operations

A comprehensive company policies and procedures manual covering all departments within your organization will become your “quality” manual for your company.  This will help ensure optimum business operations and consistent delivery of your products and services from your company.

Download Free Sample Procedure Templates to see how easy it is to edit MS Word Templates to build your own policy and procedure management system.

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Most businesses today rely on traditional marketing methods such as in-person relationship building, networking, trade show booths, or some form of display advertising, possibly direct mail, or even internet advertising for generating new revenue.  These methods still work and will continue to work at some level for quite some time.  But what about adding your social media strategy?

Our new social media strategy has us working on increasing our social networking for the past month or so now, and it’s been a lot of fun. The discussion on Twitter has been great, and we’ve “met” a lot of interesting people. Our Facebook fan page has grown, and we’ve been pleased to acquire quite the international fan base.  The Bizmanualz policies and procedures group on Linkedin is growing.

Elements of a Social Media Strategy

Your social media strategy has three important elements that begin by understanding your market, your goals, and your approach.

1. Understand the Social Media Market:

• What do people think about your brand?
• Your points of views?
• Where are the conversations online?
• What are they saying?

2. Identify Your Social Media Goals, Objectives and Success Measures:

• Awareness
• Engagement
• Popularity

3. Define Your Social Media Approach To Delivering Content:

• What social media websites do you need to post to online?
• How often?

The Social Media Market

At Bizmanualz, we use AddThis so that our users can share Bizmanualz content to 330 of the most popular social networking and bookmarking sites (like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and MySpace).  You will notice the share icon at the bottom right of every webpage.  Click on the share icon and then you can select from 330 of the most popular social sites. 

There are hundreds of social media websites to add to your marketing plan, but if you are new to social media, then the place to start is with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Linkedin.  Each one has their own focus which attracts a different group of users.  Let’s start with Twitter.

 Twitter

Today Twitter has over 500M accounts.  What is Twitter? Think of twitter.com as a microblog. Your posts (called tweets) are limited to 140 characters so you can’t be wordy.  The idea behind twitter is to socialize.  Engage others with a reply/comment to their posts.  Twitter can be used to publish important news, find new employees, get advice, or take a quick poll.  Think instant information.  If you are trying to understand your market then just follow the tweets…

If you like what others are saying then you can “re-tweet” the post to the people that follow you — your Twitter followers.  Building Twitter followers is an important element to your social media strategy.  Without followers you really don’t have a social media program.  They best way to get followers is to ask…

Ask people to follow you on twitter.  Provide your twitter handle and a benefit of what they will see in your tweets.  For example, we would like you to followBizmanualz on Twitter.

Bizmanualz Twitter

Follow Bizmanualz on Twitter

Follow @bizmanualz

Follow us – twitter.com/Bizmanualz to get expert tips everyday on business process design, business policies and procedures, and business process improvement – Follow our Twitter posts.

What can you tweet about?

You can turn your twitter feed into an online newspaper using Paper.li to do all of the work of generating fresh news from your twitter account.  Check out the Policies, Procedures, and Processes News!

Twitter can be used to publish information, collect information, and engage your market to discover new information about your market.  That is why we urge you to Follow our Twitter posts so we can learn more about you — our market.

How can you follow all the tweets?

Millions of tweets are occurring on Twitter each day so we use Tweetdeck to filter keywords, mentions, and understand the traffic.  Without a Tweetdeck application it would be very difficult to follow all the information moving about on Twitter.  Of course there are many other application for understanding your followers.  More on that later… Once you have a twitter account then you are going to have to create a social media policy.

Social Media Policy

Your social media policy must address: Who in your organization can post? What can be posted? And Who is going to reply to others?  Your social media policy reinforces your social media strategy and lays the foundation for how the company brand is managed within the social media market.  If you are going to start with Twitter then you will need a Twitter policy.

We started talking about Twitter.  Next up for your social media strategy are Facebook, Pinterest, and Linkedin.  Together they represent important social media destinations for your business.  With so many social networks, which is for you?  Between Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, social networking for business can be complicated. Which is for you?  Let’s take a look at the big three.

Facebook

Facebook has over 1 Billion user accounts and is growing.  If you have employees then somebody at your company has a Facebook account, which means you have a social media policy, one way or another.  So you might want to create a few social media policies and procedures to support your social media strategy.

Facebook is like a social watering hole.  It is a place where people add friends and post pictures, videos, links, or messages that everyone you are connected to can then comment on.  Commenting on what everyone is posting is part of the fun.  Facebook is a social center.

Organizations can use Facebook to create a page as their social center.  You can then add your twitter feed, blog posts, event information, and pictures about your company.  People then interact with your company page by posting comments or “like” what you post.  A “like” provides feedback that what you are posting is a post of interest by someone else.

Your Facebook page acts as a central repository for your pictures, events, blog posts, products, etc.  If your company is focused on the business to consumer (b2c) market then Facebook is great.  If you are focused on business to business (b2b) then Facebook will take more work.

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Pinterest

A relatively new photo-based website.  Fashion and design are popular on Pinterest, which is a good place to post pictures of your cool offices, neat artwork, or great looking products.  Popular pictures can be liked and pinned onto your own wall for your friends to see.  We have used it to pin process maps, process pictures, and other photos.  If your business has a design element, then you need to pin it on Pinterest.

Linkedin

The ultimate business focused social networking site – Linkedin.  Some think of Linkedin as a great place for recruiting new employees.  Everyone puts there resume online and then connects.  But it is more than that.  You can find people important to your business,reach out to them, and get introduced through a connection of yours.

Linkedin can be a great sales lead site to find people that work at a company.  You can also create a LinkedIn Group, which is a forum for like minded individuals to start discussions.  LinkedIn is recognizing the social aspect of social networking and moving more toward becoming a true online community and not simply a job board or business networking arena.

With Linkedin there are:

1) Message “Announcements”
Group managers can now directly message all of their members via email. Previously, we could post discussion topics, but depending on a user’s preferences, he or she may not have received the message until the end of the week-too long of a delay to utilize that application in useful ways.

2) RSS Feeds
Instead of going in manually and posting News articles of interest, or even your company’s own articles and blog posts, you can easily feed your blog into the group. And, the email says, the items will automatically show up under the “News” tab. (Done and done.)

3) Job Listings
Group managers now can enable (or disable) the job listing board within the group.

While LinkedIn remains the online community of choice for the business-minded, much more needs to be done to enhance its usefulness like Twitter, Facebook, or Google.

The Bizmanualz policies and procedures group on Linkedin is just that, for anyone interested in discussing policies and procedures.  You can ask a question, post a job, request help, or comment on what others are talking about.  Linkedin is not like twitter or Facebook.  It is more of a business network than a social hangout.  But I guess you can make it what you want too.

Join the discussion on Linkedin.

The post What is Your Social Media Strategy? appeared first on Bizmanualz.

How Do You Know If You Need A Social Media Policy?

Facebook now has over 1 Billion user accounts.  If you have employees then somebody at your company has a Facebook account.  Add in Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, and over 300 other social sites and you can bet that information is leaking out about your company.  Yes, you probably need a social media policy.

It is important to distinguish between business and personal use.  Companies have a lot of leeway in controlling what employees say using social media while at work and representing the company.  But once they go home, it is a lot less clear what is a controllable vs. protected activity.

Workers have obligations to their company when they are using their own social media accounts outside of their workplace.  They must follow the company’s code of conduct, be mindful of intellectual property concerns, and maintain company privacy.  According to recent court decisions, a lot more is considered protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) provides a lot of leeway in allowing employees to communicate with each other in a “concerted activity”, which can include complaints about workers, working conditions, or work life.  Concerted Activities are those where employees act together to try to improve their pay and working conditions or fix job-related problems.  Employers may not penalize employees for taking part in such protected group activity.

Lifehacker released results of a poll it conducted. They simply asked visitors, “Do you use Twitter?” The results were:

• Yes, regularly – am a big fan (26%)
• Occasionally (20%)
• Yes, but only for search (5%)
• Never – don’t care for (47%)

Another 3% said “other”.  Lifehacker didn’t ask about Twitter policies, though. Seeing (anecdotally) that social media policies appear to be on the increase,* I constructed my own unscientific poll on LinkedIn. I asked my “connections” (a small sample) if their companies’ policy is to:

• Encourage its use? (50%)
• Tolerate it? (18%)
• Discourage it? (0%)
• Forbid it? (27%), or
• What’s Twitter? (4%)

What’s missing, obviously, are demographics — age, gender, respondent’s job, size of the company, whether they’re B2B or B2C, etc. — and methodology. In other words, the poll would never stand up to scrutiny. Nevertheless, there’s some value there. I know what my next step is — that’s asking you, the reader, if you think an acceptable use policy for Twitter — and other social media — is needed at your workplace.

A lot of companies jumped all at once on the “Twitter train” without stopping to consider, “Is there a point to all this? Or are we just reacting?” They jumped in without putting together a plan. They were thinking (I’m guessing) that they had to get “out there” and build Twitter following because their competitors surely were, or they must be very, very close. They didn’t want to be thought of as followers, or technological laggards.

They didn’t know what results to expect, yet they were quickly disenchanted when they didn’t achieve these unspecified results. (It’s all over the Internet what they wanted — a business model, aka, money, cash flow, ROI.)

So, what should they have done (or, what to do now that it appears they’ve overcommitted)?

First, understand Twitter. Do some research on the topic. Find out all the costs (opportunity cost, maintenance cost, etc.). Assess the risks. In fact, do a whole SWOT analysis. “Social media ROI” comes in many forms. Companies often make the mistake of thinking ROI can take one form ONLY – short-term monetary gain.

Find out which entities have been most (un)successful at Twitter, and learn from them. Your goal is to determine if there’s a way to make Twitter work for your company, or if you should avoid it.

Second, assuming you’re going ahead with Twitter, lay out your objectives. Arbitrary though they might be, set a goal. A realistic goal…a stretch goal. You need something…a baseline, a hurdle…against which to gauge your success. Eventually, you gain experience and you adjust your goals.

Third, formulate your acceptable use policy (AUP) for Twitter around those goals. Policy can help — or hurt the success of your venture. There are plenty of Twitter policies online – borrow them, if you need to.  Be careful not to duplicate them — their situations are not the same as yours.

Make sure your policy is clear. Establish roles and responsibilities — who should be using Twitter, and under what circumstances. Let your users know what is and isn’t permissible. Let them know what the penalties are for one-time, multiple, minor, and major policy violations.

Fourth, revisit the policy periodically, or when special circumstances warrant. A policy written in stone isn’t a good policy.

And if you sense you jumped into the Twitter pool headfirst without checking the water’s depth? Well, you know better now, I hope. (If you decide to drop Twitter, you won’t be the first. Or the last.)

So, is it time for your organization to establish a social media policy?

* Some of the anecdotal evidence:

• ESPN Responds to Criticism, Publishes Social Media Policy (http://mashable.com/2009/08/04/espn-social-media/)
• Post Editor Ends Tweets, New Guidelines Issued (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2009/09/post_editor_ends_tweets_as_new.html)
• NFL Issues New Twitter Policy (http://views.washingtonpost.com/theleague/nflnewsfeed/2009/08/league-issues-new-twitter-policy.html)

Your Social Media Policy

Social Media

Some social media activities could be considered protected.  This is why it is a good idea to develop a Social Media Policy.  Your social media policy should reflect your confidential information release policy and procedure.

Your social media policy can include:

• Prohibitions against individual employee complaints in a social media policy does not violate the Act as long as it does not chill protected speech.  Individual complaining is not protected, but employees talking to each other is protected.
• Prohibitions against the use of company logos and trademarks for commercial purposes.  But they might be able to be used for non-commercial work-related discussions.
• Prohibitions against negative and unauthorized interviews about the company.  But employees can talk negatively to other employees if it could be part of a concerted activity.
• Prohibitions against expressing opinions with other employees.  Opinions can be factually in error, highly negative, or expressing desires to unionize.  They are all protected if they are concerted activities.
• Prohibitions against sexual harassment, illegal activities, workplace violence, discriminatory, abusive or malicious activities.
• A savings clause that recognizes employee rights–Nothing in this policy should be construed or applied to prohibit employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
• Truthfulness disclosure requirements.  Employees should disclose company affiliations when commenting on social sites.

Example Social Media Policy Guidelines

There are a number of great blog posts regarding developing your social media policy.  Checkout Ian McKendrick‘s post Ultimate List of Social Media Policies, Procedures, Governance and Guidance for a comprehensive list of sources for modeling your own Social Media Policy.  For a short list look at these examples:

• IBM Social Computing Guidelines
• NRLB Publications
• Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit
• Intel Social Media Guidelines
• Cisco Social Media Guidelines

The best way to protect your company is by establishing a Social Media Policy for your employees, agencies, and subcontractors.  Once created, communicate your Social Media Policy with training programs.  Then be sure to monitor social media posts in order to correct misstatements quickly.

Download Free Sample Procedure Templates to see how easy it is to edit MS Word Templates to build your own HR policies and procedures that can help protect your business.

The post What is a Social Media Policy? appeared first on Bizmanualz.

Policies and Procedures Templates

Policies and Procedures Templates are easily editable word documents that describe a business process.  Each template includes ten common procedure writing elements:

1. ISO conforming format.
2. A business process header with example meta-data.
3. A document control block.
4. A business process numbered outline.
5. Example paragraphs covering a set of business process activities and tasks.
6. Example forms needed by the business process being described.
7. References for more information about the business process.


Policy and Procedures Word Templates

8. References to functional jobs responsible for the actions.
9. Procedure paragraphs are written using “active voice” construction to define actions.
10. MS-Word outlining, style sheets, and headers/footers are used for easier pagination.

All of Bizmanualz Policies and Procedures Manuals combine to provide a complete and integrated starter set of business department manuals for your organization.  Companies large and small have used Bizmanualz easily editable word documents to save time in writing and deploying their company policies and procedures.

You can too.  Download free example policies and procedures templates to simplify the writing of your policy and procedures manual.

Policies and Procedures Savings Bundles



CEO Policies and Procedures Manual Bundle

Many companies start with the Accounting and Finance policies and procedures manuals.  They then add Information Technology (IT), Human Resources (HR), or the Business Sampler, which all make up the CFO Policies and Procedures savings bundle.  Next add the Sales & Marketing, Security, Disaster, and ISO Quality Manuals and you have the CEO Policies and Procedures discount bundle.

 

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