I’m not religious, but God bless high school lab technicians.

I can’t count the number of times that Dave (our high school’s technician), exasperated and exhausted, despaired at the lack of common sense some of our teachers had.

Heck, our physics teacher once almost exposed a classroom of Year 7s (11 years old!) to chlorine gas.

He forgot to turn on the extractor fans, leaving poor old Dave to rush in, turn them on, and then promptly evacuate everyone from the room.

Corroding the lungs of your students is, after all, not best practice.

This is why it’s important to have set lab procedures in place. Following these documented processes is the best way to prevent disaster.

When 25-38% of lab personnel have been in an accident that wasn’t even reported (as demonstrated by Dana Ménard and John Trant), you can see the dangers that are easily taken for granted in a lab environment.

That’s why we here at Process Street have created a Lab SOP process that you can use for free, and will go over the common points that a lab procedure needs to cover in this post.

If you just want to get the checklist for yourself, you can check it out below.

You can also click the links below to be taken to a specific section of the article:

• What are lab procedures?
• Why lab procedures are important
• Common lab procedure touchpoints
• Get started with our Lab SOP template
• Document and track your procedures with Process Street

Let’s get started!
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Knowing how to write a procedure is a key skill for anyone looking to build a successful business. Procedures are vital to consistent success for many of the same reasons that processes are important – they let you reliably repeat your successes, isolate and correct your mistakes, and create a business model that lets you scale your operations.

If you don’t know how to write a procedure then you’re dead in the water. Get it right, and the resulting efficiency boosts can put you on track to eclipse your competitors.

This Process Street post will cover the following topics to help you write effective procedures:

• What is a procedure?
• Why are procedures important?
• Preparing to write your procedures
• How to write an effective procedure
• How to write an effective procedure

Read on to learn the 13 steps to writing your business’ procedures effectively, in a way that they will actually be followed instead of getting read once and then forgotten.

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Lunch was over.

I was walking back to our senior common room with my friends. When we reached Foundation House, we found all of the students and teachers standing outside while the fire brigade trailed in.

There was no smoke or visible flames but I saw three friends that we’d left in the common room off to one side of the car park looking sheepish.

Turns out that they’d managed to make a pseudo-napalm launcher out of a tube of Pringles, a rubber band, spray deodorant, a lighter, and a supply of biro casings.

My friends were smart but, as you might’ve guessed, had no common sense.

Whether you have students setting off fire alarms with molten flaming plastic or have a much larger accident, it’s important to know that your safety measures are up to standard.

$25 billion in damages were caused by fire in 2018 in the US alone, which should tell you how vital it is to catch fires and deal with them early before they need additional help to contain.

That’s why fire extinguisher inspections are so important.

In this post I’ll cover:

• What is a fire extinguisher inspection?
• How often do fire extinguishers need inspecting?
• Who can inspect fire extinguishers?
• Perform free monthly inspections with Process Street

You’ll also get access to Process Street’s free Fire Extinguisher Inspection Checklist in the very next section of this article!

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Project proposals are how you can get management to act on your ideas. They’re the bottom-up version of a project request form.

They are how you can influence your company’s future.

Writing a project proposal isn’t rocket science, but it is a vital skill for being able to successfully pitch projects that you know will benefit your team and business as a whole. Casual conversations aren’t enough – you need to give a formal document that addresses concerns before your manager, CEO, and stakeholders have a chance to voice them.

Plus, having a set template for writing a proposal gives you a document which you can reference throughout the entire project. Instead of having to rely on notes and your vague memory of a water cooler conversation, you have set instructions to follow, and a defense against anyone who says that the project isn’t worth it.

It’s a great example of effective business process management – if anyone questions you, you can show them the project proposal and say “this was approved, and so this is what we’re going to do”.

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Product defects can range from benign to deadly. The Ford Pinto, for example, caused up to 180 deaths and many more disfigurements before being recalled due to fuel tank safety defects.

Ford’s resulting loss of reputation (especially because they had known about the issue and failed to take action) and money in lawsuits is something nobody wants to deal with. Errors and defects thus should be identified and dealt with as soon as possible.

That’s why this article from us here at Process Street will take a look at PDCA – the continuous improvement cycle dedicated to doing just that.

We’ll cover:

• What is PDCA?
• PDCA vs PDSA
• How to implement PDCA with Process Street

Enough talk, let’s dive right in!
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This is a guest post written by Jeff Oxford. Jeff is a tech enthusiast who follows new trends in technology and digital marketing. He had been a speaker at the 2013, 2017, and 2018 IRCE and has written contributions to Forbes.com, InternetRetailer.com, and Infusionsoft.

Staying on top of tasks amid distractions is not a problem exclusive to the 21st century, although today’s folks have to deal with social media. It is the rabbit hole where anyone can willingly spend at least 144 minutes every day.

You can expect this statistic to rise when the expected three billion people, or 40 percent of the world’s population in 2021, will join the social networking sites.

With that and other things in mind, it’s no wonder that productivity and efficiency are the main targets of a tireless quest to achieve a productive work life.

According to Google Trends, the interest in productivity peaked in September 2018. While it has sustained some lows, the idea continues to gain attention as we speak.

Efficiency, like productivity, also enjoys high volume searches in the US.

Turning a blind eye on the impact of social media and relevant efficiency killers is counterproductive. Surely, limiting access to Facebook, Twitter, and other sites that compel browsing during office hours can help. Plus, smartphones have to go or be kept out of reach to avoid looking at it every 20 minutes.

It makes even more sense to face the battle head-on, combat technology with technology. Companies can focus their energies on speeding up, streamlining, sorting processes so that people have less time to wonder and wander about in the office.

That’s not to say that you’ll always be able to tell why your productivity plummets.

Every workplace is different, and so are the people that populate it. However, office culture and personal quirks aside, this article will count exemplary technologies and tools that harness, not hinder, workplace productivity.

If you’d like to skip ahead then feel free to use the links below:

• 1. A reliable, fast connection goes a long way
• 2. A project management tool tracks everything
• 3. A time tracking tool gives control
• 4. A chat app provides quick, real-time updates
• 5. Teleconference Equipment Links Teams
• Working with technology is the new productivity
• Boost your productivity today with Process Street!

Let’s dive in!
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Workflow approvals are a bottleneck of the worst kind.

Projects get delayed waiting for approval, and those reviewing the work spend more time searching for the piece than they do reviewing it.

“Professionals take 18 minutes on average to locate a document manually––20% to 40% of their time––and spend 50% of their time searching for information.” – Ashish Deshpande, 50+ Key Statistics to Help You Automate Smarter in 2020 and Beyond

That’s where we here at Process Street come in.

We know how important it is to have an effective method for organizing your workflow approvals. Heck, everything our content team does goes through at least two rounds of review before it goes live.

Check out task five in the following free process template for a snapshot of how we handle workflow approvals with Process Street!

That’s why today we’ll be covering:

• What is a workflow approval?
• Workflow approval benefits
• How to create an approval workflow
• How to supercharge your approval process
• 21 free approval templates

Let’s dive right in.
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This is a guest post from Derek Gallimore from Outsource Accelerator. Derek’s blend of extensive international business and travel experience means that outsourcing came relatively naturally to him. Derek has been in business for over 20 years, outsourcing for over seven years, and has lived in Manila, Philippines – the world’s outsourcing capital – for over five years. He has worked and lived in five countries and worked and traveled through dozens more.

A great business focuses on building customer relations. They need to reach out to their customers to fulfill their service needs, such as inquiries, service-related concerns, and marketing offers.

Someone needs to follow up on billings and collections. Another person needs to send out newsletters to its clients. When a new product or offer comes out, someone must inform the customers either through calls or emails. In some cases, someone also needs to gather data regarding customer satisfaction and commentaries on what needs to be improved in their products.

It can be tedious, especially for startups and small businesses with a few people on it to man these tasks at once, so strong customer service and sales teams are needed to fulfill these tasks.

Good thing is, businesses can rely on call centers to manage these activities. This article will tackle:

• Pros and cons of call center outsourcing
• Costs of an outsourced call center team
• How to find and hire a call center
• Best practices in hiring a call center

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Can you prove your team’s performance?

How do you know for certain that nothing is being missed?

The answer is simple; you perform an internal audit.

We here at Process Street know how difficult it can be to keep track of your internal workings. Short of documenting and tracking everything (which can be a hassle) it’s easy to lose track of the risks posed to your organization.

That’s ignoring how hard it can be to track whether your teams are performing their duties correctly.

That’s why this post will dive into everything you need to know about internal audits. These are practices that let you get an objective assessment of various elements of your company, such as this ISO 9001 process.

We’ll cover:

• What is an internal audit?
• Types of audits
• Benefits of internal audits
• Internal auditing examples
• Use Process Street to run your internal audits

Let’s dive in.
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I felt numb.

My relationship of the last 2 years had just collapsed, which was the straw that broke… well, my head. I spiraled into a mental breakdown.

I was living in Italy without knowing anyone but my (now ex) girlfriend, living in the same apartment as her, not being able to speak the language, and around $4,000 down in my bank account from when we’d moved there two months prior.

And yet, thanks to our employee assistance program here at Process Street, I was able to get back to England safe and sound, without worries about getting fired adding to fuel to my problems.

“According to the 2018 SHRM Employee Benefits Research Report, 78 percent of surveyed employers offered an EAP. Those same employers found EAPs to be a cost-effective tool to help mitigate risks involving employees within their organizations.” – New Focus HR, What is an Employee Assistance Program?

No matter how focused and productive an employee is, there will be times when they encounter personal problems that affect their work. That’s where employee assistance programs (EAPs) come in.

EAPs exist to listen to your team’s problems and help them through whatever they’re experiencing. In other words, every team should have access to some kind of EAP.

That’s why this post will take you through:

• What is EAP?
• EAP benefits
• How to set up an EAP
• Use Process Street to help battle your team’s problems

Let’s dive right in.
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