eSoup

Bringing Your Dog To Work Reduces Stress, Increases Productivity

One of the main reasons why I was inspired to start my Virtual Assistant practice is that I wanted to work with a dog by my side. 

Previous to that, I was working in the corporate world where bringing a furry friend to work was a no-no.

Before I started my own business, I didn't have a dog. Since I spent all day away from home, I didn't feel like I could handle taking care of a dog.

That was what drew me to starting a home business--I could finally get a dog and keep her by my side all day! 

This month I saw an encouraging article in Cesar's Way magazine that reported that 1 in 5 businesses (including Google, Amazon, and Ben & Jerry's) now allow employees to bring their dogs to work. 

There is even National "Bring Your Dog To Work Day", which is June 22, 2012. More than 3,000 employers have signed up to participate in that event. 

What are the benefits of working with a dog at your side?

Obviously less stress--studies have shown that when you pet a dog, your blood pressure goes down. Being around dogs tends to make people relax. 

According to the Cesar's Way magazine article, studies have shown that people tend to cooperate more with each other when there is a dog in the room--isn't that interesting? Dogs are natural peace makers; they take the edge off!

Another thing that I've noticed about working with dogs--they make you take regular breaks, which is good. If I am left to my own devices I can sit down at my desk in the morning, and the next thing I know it's evening!

When you work with a dog by your side you will naturally get up every couple hours to take them outside, which is good for both of you. 

I now have two adorable pups that are my "office assistants" (little "Paisley" is pictured above), and I know I couldn't get as much done without them. ;)

What about you--do you bring your dog to work (even when you're working at home)?

 

How To Create An Online Procedure Manual For Your Virtual Team

Your online procedure manual is basically an "intranet" for your business. You and everyone on your team (even if your team is just you and one other person) will use this intranet when doing various tasks associated with the operations of your business. 

It's for your eyes and your team's eyes only--although your business' procedure manuals are online, they should be password locked so that only the people on your team can see them. 

Last time I was telling you 5 reasons why it's really smart to set up your procedure manual when your business is small and less complicated. Believe me, your work will be so much easier if you start compiling your manual when there aren't that many tasks. 

Where should you keep your procedure manual? 

I would recommend installing a blog on your own server and using that as the "procedure manual". The different categories can represent different types of procedures involved with your business. The access should be "locked" so that only people with a password can get in to see the manual. This isn't the sort of thing that will be visible to anyone but you and your team.  

If you can't have a blog installed on your own server, then used a paid blog platform such as TypePad. 

Where shouldn't you keep your procedure manual?

• Don't put it in Google docs -- Google docs is great for sharing shorter documents or things that you don't mind losing, but don't use it to store anything really valuable. Google docs is out of your control--you don't own it and you aren't paying anything for it, so you have no grounds for complaining if a technical issue occurs and your documents disappear one day. I'm speaking from experience here--For years, one of my clients had all of his procedure manuals in Google docs, and then one day without much warning, they were gone. Thankfully, I had made copies of the manuals before they completely disappeared, but otherwise the procedures would have been lost. Remember, this procedure manual that you're creating will be valuable--it takes time to create, and if you lost it it would take a long time to replace. Keep it in a safe place.
• Don't put it in a free blog platform, such as Blogger or Wordpress.com. If the platform isn't on your own server or isn't one that you're paying someone to host for you, whatever you put on that blog can be lost, and you don't have much traction for getting it back. 
• Don't put it in a Word doc. You want to keep this procedure manual online, so it can be easily updated by you or your virtual assistant and everyone else on your team can see the changes immediately. It would defeat the purpose to keep the manual offline. 

How Do You Organize The Manual?

You'll have the blog set up to function as the "Mission Control" of your procedure manual, and you'll give permissions to each person on your team (that may just be you and your virtual assistant). 

It depends on what type of blog design you have, but I've seen folks use the categories to separate the different topics. 

We're talking about big categories, like "Customer Support", "Affiliate Program Procedures", "FAQs", etc. At this point you might not know every type of procedure that you'll be using, and that's just fine. You can actually get more specific on your categories later. 

For every single recurring task that you assign to your virtual assistant, ask her to also create a procedure to go along with it. 

For example, let's say you asked me to set up your newsletter every week in Aweber (or whatever newsletter distribution service you use). I would write down, step-by-step everything that I did to get the newsletter ready for distribution, starting with the first step. I would also put any instructions meant to accompany that procedure, for example:

This newsletter is to be put together by Thursday of each week to be distributed each Friday at 10 am. 

1 - Go to Aweber.com and login. 

2 - Go to Messages => Broadcast

and so on....

I also recommend including screenshots of each step. Visuals always help people to learn. 

Also, if customer support is involved in your business, start accumulating a FAQs section in your manual. Each post would be one question (listed in the title) and the answer (listed in the post body). This is so helpful in maintaining consistent answers for frequently asked questions. It also saves time.

Conclusion

A detailed step-by-step guide for each recurring task that your virtual assistant will do is a beautiful thing!

You're creating order in your business and ensuring that the work is done with consistency. It's also just plain practical--there are some tasks that your AsssitU trained VA will do that have numerous steps, so the manual will guide her as she does the task each day, week or month. 

If you need more convincing about getting a procedure manual for your business going, see this post:

Virtual Teams and Small Businesses: Procedure Manuals Are A Must!

 

Virtual Teams and Small Businesses: Procedure Manuals Are A Must!

You might think, "It's just me and my virtual assistant--why do we need to have a procedure manual?"

Even if it's just the two of you, it is still a great investment in your business to start compiling a procedure manual. Why?

Here are 5 reasons why you should start building a procedure manual today:

1 - For one thing, it is a teaching aid.

You assemble the procedure one time, and then every time you or your virtual assistant does the task, you can just look at your procedure manual to see the step-by-step instructions on how to do things. 

2 - It helps keep you in the loop. 

As your virtual assistant takes on more and more of your work, she may be doing things that you haven't done before or things that you're not that familiar with. By having a procedure manual in place, you will be able to do what your virtual assistant does, if needed. 

3 - It helps you plan for the future expansion of your team. 

As your business grows, roles may change in your business. Your virtual assistant may start out doing some things that you later want to assign to someone else. If you have a procedure manual in place, the integration of new team members is relatively seamless.

4 - It helps you present a consistent business "face" and message to your clients. 

This is especially true when it comes to customer service. You will most likely have "frequently asked questions" (FAQs) that come in via customer support. By having a FAQs section of your procedure manual, the same answer can be given for whenever a customer asks a common question. That way you aren't giving out conflicting information. It also saves you time because you (or your virtual assistant) don't have to start from scratch formulating a reply every time a particular question comes in. 

5 - It keeps the level of the work that's done in your business consistent. 

No matter who is doing the work, whether it's you, your VA, or another member of your team, if the person follows the step-by-step instructions, the product of each person's work should be relatively similar. 

So, it may be just you and your virtual assistant right now, but who knows how your business will expand over the next 5 years? Why not build your business so that it can easily grow and expand?

Are you convinced that you need to start compiling a procedure manual? Next time we'll cover how to go about creating one.