Are Missing SOPs Decreasing Your Network Reliability?

It's not enough to know you have a problem with your enterprise-wide alarm and control network – you also need to know how to fix it. And you need to fix the problem with whoever is available at a moment's notice. At these times, a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) guide is vital.

That's because an SOP guide is one of the best ways to capture corporate knowledge and maintain access to rarely used knowledge. It allows you to craft and document responses to an alarm event with the same precision you already have in detecting the event.

Once you capture and add up all the SOPs required to maintain the breadth of your network, you will have created a Corporate Intellectual Property Knowledge Base. All the documentation needed to fix a problem is at your fingertips. Now it’s easier to maintain your network and retain the knowledge in the face of staff turnover.

A Corporate Intellectual Property Knowledge Base captures all of the SOPs required to maintain your network.

When you combine network monitoring with an SOP knowledge base, you create a powerful tool that empowers your dream of 24x7x365 uptime.

SOPs are Crucial in Every Industry

Whether you work at a telco, power utility, railway, government agency, or any other organization, monitoring your remote site infrastructure is a big job.

But what good is it to know that your "Wolf Mountain Radio Site" has a tower light failure if your junior technician doesn't know how to react?

While these concerns are always present, they have become more pressing as one huge demographic shift is driving up your staff turnover...

The "Retirement Wave" is Upon You

Today, just about every industry is experiencing a wave of retirements. When veteran employees retire, they have to be replaced with new hires. As a result, there's a massive loss of experience and knowledge. Older staff members are leaving. When working with my clients, I see this play out for many organizations in every corner of the U.S.

The best companies recognize that SOPs help bridge the gap in knowledge. It also accelerates the accumulation of experience among new staff by exposing them to best practices right from the start.

Without SOPs, You Get Random "Best Guess" Chaos

In any organization, you need to be consistent to be successful. New hires may have learned a way of doing something from their previous job, or they will apply their "best guess." Either way, their efforts may not match up with your best practices.

The SOP provides your new hires with a solid path for learning to do it your way, meeting all your needs and standards.

SOPs beat many other approaches that simply don't work, including:

Letting People Guess Every Time

While your staff may want to do the right thing, usually everyone's idea of what that right thing is will be different. They may have bad habits from a previous job, or they might just wing it. This means that every process iteration is going to be different according to who is doing it.

Tribal Training

Tribal training is like the "telephone game." At least there's some kind of knowledge transfer happening, but it's inefficient and ineffective. With nothing in writing, you'll have various experts with various approaches they inherited. Each time the oral history gets passed down to new hires, it will mutate more and more.

The Humble SOP is the Key

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are detailed, step-by-step instructions that explain how to execute a specific process properly. They don't describe the shortest way to do the job, but rather the shortest way to get a guaranteed good result.

In calm moments, SOPs allow for faster training of your new people and easier cross-training of existing staff.

In emergencies, SOPs ensure that all information - even rarely used processes needed only once a decade – are available for immediate use.

What You'll Gain from Good SOPs

• You'll save time and money

An SOP makes every process as simple as possible - but no simpler. You and your team will be able to achieve the correct result in as little time as possible.

• You'll gain consistency

SOPs are a way to ensure that, no matter who is performing the task, they will complete it correctly. This means that, by introducing SOPs early in your onboarding process and making them continuously available afterward, you'll eliminate the harm that staff changes have on your business.

• Your Culture Will Turn Against "Best Guesses" and Tribal Training

SOPs make your team's jobs easier because they no longer have to guess the best way to complete their tasks - nor try to remember what they were told when they were first hired. This leads to strong appreciation and a drive to continue excellent process control when training the next generation of employees.

The Right Alarm Master is Your Secret Weapon for Managing and Using SOPs

If you expect that all your employees follow the rules you've codified in your SOPs, you need to make it as easy as possible.

Consider the environment you work in: Your team knows they're responsible for keeping your network online. They're aware of various tools - like RTUs, alarm masters, test sets - that they use regularly.

It's not enough to tack a few printed SOPs on the wall. You need to integrate SOPs seamlessly into your environment to get maximum staff buy-in.

One excellent way to do this is to leverage your central alarm master. It's already a hub of organizational knowledge. It has a database of every remote site and significant alarm type that can threaten your network.

You need an alarm master that also supports the creation, management, and instant display of SOPs at key moments.

To make sure your new employees will be able to handle your network alarms effectively, give them a master station that tells them what to do with the right SOP at the right time.

Imagine that your alarm master allows your managers and senior staff to document response protocols for a particular problem. Imagine that - instead of a vague alarm description - your technicians get an amazing clear SOP popping up onscreen when something goes wrong.

Whenever an alarm is triggered, your master station will pop up an SOP to make sure the issue is addressed correctly.

This process leaves nothing to chance. You've given your new hires - plus anyone forced to respond to a rare alarm event - the best possible opportunity to succeed.

The Takeaway

"He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit."

-Sun Tzu

The biggest brains in your company can't be everywhere at once. However, if you have solid SOPs in place, their collected wisdom can be. SOPs enable all of your employees to react like experts and keep your network online.

SOPs require an upfront investment, but it's one that pays off quickly. By integrating them into your central alarm master, you have great knowledge capture AND instant display.

SOPs, prepared ahead of time and intelligently associated with your network alarms, enable your team to use the shortest method to achieve a guaranteed good result – each and every time.

Want to talk more about the best ways to integrate SOPs into your alarm master? Contact me, and let's talk about the challenges your company