Stefan 
It’s not just about documenting your steps — it’s about your ed. agency’s growth
I built an education agency business from the ground up. There came a time when I realised, I couldn’t do everything myself. That’s when I took a deep breath and decided to hire other education counsellors to help. Great decision – but done the wrong way.
When it came to training the new counsellors for my education agency business, I went with the show-and-tell method. I thought and hoped they would learn by copying me. It would have been great, if I could remember everything off the top of my head, and also hope they wouldn’t forget either. We all know that’s not how the brains work though.
The whole exercise ended up in a self-made chaos.
Sometimes I would cringe when I would see them interacting with students. Other times left me wondering why they would call me to ask for basic instructions when they could have been able to figure it out themselves. Everyone was frustrated.
Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to train and empower people, I disempowered them by having an attitude that would send the wrong message: if you want something done right, do it yourself.
What are SOPs?
You can’t imply expectations. You have to clearly tell people what’s expected of them and give them the support and resources they need to meet the expectations you set. This would mean transferring best practices from head to paper.
As an education agent, when you hear of the term SOP, you would most likely think of Statement of Purpose. It’s a professional defect, I know… In this case though, the term SOPs refers to Standard Operation Procedures.
Standard Operation Procedures help everyone get on the same page about what to do, when and how to do it, and why. It’s not only about documenting the steps – it’s about your business growth.
A simple definition of standard operating procedures would be: SOPs are step-by-step processes required to complete specific, repetitive tasks.
Here are some examples of when you might need some SOPs :
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Student services functions like onboarding and offboarding students
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HR functions like recruiting new education counsellors
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Operations like creating and processing applications
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Accounting tasks like invoicing
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Good SOPs clearly show whose responsibility is to complete certain tasks. They state the goal of the process, when it needs to be done, the steps involved, and what resources are available to complete the process.
In a nutshell, SOPs help you transfer the best practices knowledge you developed in your head, to documented processes. Once those processes are documented, the standard operating procedures allow someone else to complete those tasks at the same standard as you would be doing them yourself.
The benefits
You might think it will feel rigid to have SOPs for all the processes in your business however, in reality, standard operating procedures are the first step to enable you to start working ON your business and not just IN your business.
Before you start creating standard operating procedures, think about why you are creating them. Here are a few of the benefits you’ll notice in your business:
1. Enable business growth
The more students you recruit, the more your team will grow. By your team I’m not only referring to employees. It can mean anything from outsourcing tasks to freelancers to employing permanent staff. Having SOPs means you can serve more students by scaling replicating processes and maintain quality.
Standard operating procedures will also help your team grow. They won’t be wondering anymore if they’re doing things right.
2. Make processes more efficient
Standardizing and systemizing your education agency will help you see where every process fits in, how well the process fits in and if there’s a better way to do it. You’ll begin to see how each process improves your education agency, or not. It’s not only about documenting your processes; it’s also about ensuring those processes are right to begin with.
Once you manage to standardize and document your business processes, it will be easier for you to find solutions to automate those processes. For example, if there’s a process that involves moving information between apps that you have to do frequently, you can explore automating that process.
3. Scale your training
SOPs can become training manuals. When a new staff comes in, they’ll be able to catch up without you micromanaging.
4. Maintain quality standards
If you want your education agency to give your students the same quality consistently, you will need a framework in place that ensures that everyone provides a uniform service even in your absence.
Why hire staff if you’ll be doing everything yourself? Having SOPs in place will make sure everyone gave students the same high-quality service every time.
5. Have a holiday
Don’t feel guilty when you take a holiday. If you feel like things will fall apart when you’re gone, work towards changing that. That should be enough incentive to get those standard operating procedures in place.
How to write an SOP that improves your education agency
Focus on the benefits of creating SOPs. Here’s a guide to how you can create SOPs that will help you get on a nice holiday:
Identify core processes that need to be standardised
Which tasks in your education agency are repetitive: you do them a lot, and they need to be done in the same way every time, with little or no variation? You won’t need to have SOPs for little things – only processes with lots of steps.
Map and document the processes
Write down the processes in clear, simple and short sentences. Flow charts help too. They don’t add the context, but they can be a great first step for anyone first learning process. If you already have a team, include them in this process. Don’t create processes that people don’t identify with. Your team might have already figured out a simpler way of doing the same process.
Implement the SOPs and communicate the processes
Everyone on your team will need to be on the same page regarding the documentation. Don’t just assume your team will notice the tweaked process you did in order to streamline it, communicate this to them.
Make it clear why they need to follow these procedures. People are more inclined to take SOPs seriously if they understand the significance of the documentation and how it will help the business.
Monitor and review your SOPs regularly
Just like business plans or marketing plans, it’s easy to create SOPs, feel a sense of accomplishment, then let them collect dust.
When I open a box, I toss aside the user manual and only consult it when things have gone wrong. SOPs are not like that. They are living documents that you need to update whenever something changes in the workflow or when you find new ways to do things more efficient.
Automate anything you can
The aim in SOPs is to find processes that can be fully automated.
Automating processes will save you and your team valuable time to focus on doing work that will give you a competitive advantage, delight your students and encourage growth. The exercise of creating SOPs, you’re basically reviewing all your education agency processes and will figure out which ones you can automate.
If you have the right processes in place, you’ll be able to scale your education agency and open more locations. If you believe you’re stuck, standard operating procedures are an easy way to get back on track.
