Most business owners hesitate to take time off because they know things will fall apart if they leave. Even business owners who have competent employees face this dilemma because it’s not about competence. It’s the fact that most of their business processes live in their head, and nobody else will know what to do while they’re away.
If you’re a business owner who desperately needs a vacation, you don’t have to sacrifice your need for a break just to keep your business running. Here’s how to document your processes to ensure your business runs smoothly in your absence.
Create visual documentation
Videos and searchable documentation are the key to reducing repeated training requests and supporting team independence. One of the fastest ways to document a process is to record it as you do it. For processes that take place online, screen recording tools> let you capture real workflows in real-time, whether it’s running payroll or onboarding a new client.
Screen recordings are easy to follow and leave nothing to interpretation regarding where to click and which options to choose. Videos also become powerful evergreen assets and can be reused for training and troubleshooting in the future.
If you’re going to hand responsibilities to your staff, make it as easy as possible by providing them with a live walkthrough so they don’t have to guess at what you expect. They can pause the video and rewatch any part if it’s not clear, without needing to call you on your vacation.
Create checklists for recurring tasks
You might remember all those recurring tasks that need to happen because you do them every day, but the people taking over for you won’t. Checklists are a simple, yet powerful way to keep critical tasks from slipping through the cracks. They simplify complex tasks and reduce the potential for human error.
Create daily, weekly, and monthly checklists for your team to use in your absence. Even if something seems obvious, add it to the list so it doesn’t get forgotten. But be sure to create and document standardized procedures for each task to maintain consistency and accuracy in execution.
If you don’t already use a project management system, consider assigning tasks to each person using a platform like Basecamp or Asana. Your checklists will make it much easier for your team to support your business while you’re gone.
Store documentation in a centralized system
Documentation is only useful when people can find it fast. Unfortunately, that’s a big problem as it is. Research shows that employees waste nearly two hours every day looking for information, and that’s exactly what you don’t want to happen while you’re away. Putting your documentation in a centralized, searchable hub ensures everyone can find what they need when they need it.
Some popular cloud-based platforms for storing documents include Google Drive, Notion, and Confluence. The benefits of using a cloud solution include easy sharing, searchable tags, and category navigation. With a solution like Box, you can control user access by restricting access to folders by group.
Assign ownership to each process
When you leave and ask your team to take over certain roles, it’s crucial to assign ownership to each process. That way, one person will be accountable for every process, and there won’t be any confusion regarding who’s taking over what.
Assigning responsibility ensures accountability and keeps workflows running smoothly. Ownership also creates a sense of duty and reduces dependency on leadership. But it’s also important to assign a backup owner in case someone is out for the day.
Test your processes before you leave
The last thing you want to do is leave for vacation without putting your processes to the test to make sure your team knows what to do. Testing ensures any gaps are identified before they become a crisis.
Do a quick trial run first. Give your team a genuine experience. Ask them to follow your systems without assistance and see what happens. Step away for a day or two and see where the system breaks. There’s a good chance something will go wrong, and that’s what you want to discover. The more errors you spot during the test run, the fewer problems your team will encounter when you’re gone for real.
Your freedom will come from good documentation
Going on vacation shouldn’t make you feel like you’re gambling with your business’s survival. By carefully documenting workflows, creating documented procedures, building helpful checklists, centralizing information, and testing your processes, you’ll have a system that can run without you. And that’s exactly what will allow you to take that vacation without checking your phone every hour.
