Document Types and Lifecycle
Policies
Policies are “The Rules” that govern the operation of our company and those who work for it. Policies are generally developed by executives usually with legal advice, but they typically evolve as the business grows and changes. Policies cover everything from dress codes to performance reviews; they are the foundation upon which all other guidelines are built. Almost every business has policies of some sort in place, and often they need to be more regimented about how often policies are revisited and updated.
Example: A company might have a policy that mandates preventative maintenance be performed on all manufacturing equipment so that workers are not at risk and downtime is avoided.
Procedures
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) or similar reference manuals explain how to fulfill our company’s policies in more specific detail. Procedures often dictate “what” must be done and “who” is responsible. If it were company policy that all employees must receive 20 hours of safety training, an SOP would explain how those hours should be allocated and attained. While all companies should have some form of SOPs in place, these are often neglected or nonexistent in companies where everyone’s attention is focused elsewhere.
Example: A maintenance SOP would lay out the process of complying with the company’s preventative maintenance policy, including responsibilities, accountabilities and specific procedures.
Work Instructions
If SOPs relay the “what” and “who” of a job, work instructions tell you “how.” These step-by-step instructions tend to be department- or job-specific and explain how to execute SOPs to accomplish specific tasks. For example, a work instruction explains how to conduct a maintenance check on a piece of machinery or arrange files on a server. Work instructions typically exist to some extent within a company, but most businesses could stand to have more thorough and better-written work instructions that are easier to follow.
Example: A maintenance work instruction would give step-by-step instructions explaining the weekly, monthly, and annual checks and maintenance for equipment. The work instruction aligns with a preventive maintenance SOP.
Job Aids
A job aid is a specific piece of material intended to help someone execute a task more effectively. While work instruction could be categorized as a job aid in some situations, job aids encompass more than just directions. Examples include checklists, labeled photographs of equipment parts, company directories, flyers, and any other supplemental material that assists in accomplishing a task. In most cases, Thrive uses the term Job Aid and Work Instruction interchangeably.
Example: A diagram of a piece of equipment serves as a job aid, supplementing work instructions that explain how to execute a preventive maintenance SOP aligned to a company policy.
What Does It All Mean to You?
The most important thing to know about these various directional assets is that Thrive needs them but may not have them. SOPs often go unwritten or poorly executed because no one has time to set up or update them. Work instructions are often drafted when someone is asked to “document what you do,” but the results are inconsistent or incomplete. Everyone recognizes that business needs guidelines, but no one knows quite how to create them effectively.
These varied directional materials are worth investing in. Putting the right procedures, work instructions, and job aids in place can yield:
Improved efficiencies
Consistent product/service quality
Reduced downtime
Reduced errors
Reduced employee turnover
Reduced time to competency for newly hired employees
Referenceable data for continuous improvement efforts1
The Document Lifecycle
Document lifecycle is the process that a document goes through from creation to archiving/destruction. This includes steps such as storage, approval, and sharing. Managing the lifecycle is crucial to ensure that documents are accessible, current, and versions are handled properly. Organizations must monitor every stage of each document’s path to ensure accurate information is available when needed. There are four phases of the document lifecycle.
Document Creation
The generation of documents is the first stage in the lifecycle. Documents can be created or generated in various ways, and they can come from various sources.
Generating a document:
Utilize collaboration tools such as Microsoft Word or Confluence
Certain documents require revision/approval by your supervisor or someone with greater knowledge of the subject matter.
Convert paper documents to digital format in a secured format such as PDF or URL.
The document enters the storage phase once it is created and approved.
Storage and Socialization for Thrive
When storing documents, we should apply basic classification, categorization, and indexing to guarantee that we have a well-ordered digital library.
At this stage, it is also critical that we apply various strategies and techniques to enable workers to access documents as quickly as feasible. Applying metadata to our document libraries is recommended for this end.
Metadata allows users to search for data to find a document and give it context. Some useful metadata to have requires a column in the SharePoint library for department program, end-user focus, and expiration date (with a possible flow to trigger the revision date).
Our storage locations are SharePoint and Confluence.
Document Sharing and Delivery
Once a PDF or URL is stored on SharePoint, the document is operational and serves its function. This stage defines how documents are shared and edited, whether by an individual or a group of people.
Depending on the securities set for a particular SharePoint sharing link, these documents may be distributed internally (inside the business) or shared with third-party stakeholders such as subcontractors and clients.
Sharing documents by URL is critical to ensuring the latest version is shared. Breaking the practice of using a URL, leads to:
multiple documents in a variety of locations proving difficult to know what is the most current
difficult to track a revision cycle
difficult to obtain SME input
reduced confidence in SMEs
Our sharing platform is SharePoint, the Thrive Community intranet.
Document Archival or Destruction
The fourth stage of the lifecycle is archival or destruction. The majority of documents have a finite active life. Once a document has served its purpose, it should be preserved or destroyed in accordance with the department records retention plan to maintain compliance with industry or government rules and regulations. 2
If a department does not maintain an archival process, knowledge management will archive documents consistent with the Records Retention Policy and Schedule in annual folders.
Once a new document is created, it is vital to ensure outstanding versions are not still in circulation.