Duties. Deliverables. Deadlines.

No matter if an employee is working as part of a tiny startup based in the CEO’s basement, or a multinational company with offices across the globe, there are important tasks that each and every employee needs to knock out the park.

But how can companies ensure their employees can complete tasks effectively? And that employees aren’t creating a backlog of work for themselves, which could decrease overall productivity by up to 68%?

Answer: An employee task list.

At least, that’s what countless top, thriving companies have told us after we asked them about their task list and checklist habits.

In this post – which is the next part in Process Street‘s series investigating how, why, and in what ways successful businesses use lists for their workflows – I’ll deep dive into the nitty-gritty of employee task lists. Plus, you’ll get the exclusive opportunity to discover the never-seen-before findings from our in-depth research.

Just read through the following sections:

• What is an employee task list?
• What jobs require an employee task list?
• How is an employee task list useful?
• Why marketing teams around the globe utilize employee task lists
• Employee task list best practices: Crushing duties & deadlines
• Use Process Street to create a superpowered employee task list!

However, before delving into our findings, I’ll first define exactly what an employee task list is.

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Trump. Pineapples on pizza. Checklists.

What the public is divided on is incredibly varied.

To boot, how the public uses checklists varies even more. For instance, at Process Street, we use checklists for pretty much everything – not only because we’re a virtual team, but also because, well, we know they’re darn useful.

But we also know some organizations don’t use checklists to such a degree – they’re limiting themselves to only 2-3 checklists per team. Or, they’re using business software that wasn’t intended for checklists to create, manage, and house their checklists. ( )

We thought this was all very interesting.

That’s why we’ve done some qualitative research regarding how organizations around the globe are using checklists – specifically, employee checklists.

Dear reader, we’re bringing you some top-secret, never-seen-before material on how organizations really use employee checklists. In the below sections, you’ll find insightful comments from our participant pool:

• How organizations use employee checklists for daily tasks
• How do top marketing teams use employee checklists?
• What tools do organizations use for employee checklists?
• Best practices for building solid employee checklists
• Build superpowered employee checklists with Process Street!

Now, let’s get into it.

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Career aptitude tests are powerful tools for both employers and employees alike. They can be used to gain insight into personal tendencies and make informed responses to career and hiring decisions.

Tests like these can differ in:

• Purpose (i.e. for career placement, selection, counseling, or training)
• What they measure (i.e. what they are designed to measure, be it personality type, skills, work approaches, values, or vocational interests)
• What they predict (i.e. performance, quality of work, management potential, career success and satisfaction, your next job)
• Format (online, paper form, in-person)
• Standardization and rigor (how subjective or objective are the test results?)

Some tests are highly structured, with definitive quantifiable outcomes; others are more flexible, and designed to be personally interpreted.

This article will look at six different types of aptitude test, broadly defined, and run through the process of how you can build your own aptitude tests using Process Street.

We’ll cover:

• What is a career aptitude test?
• How to build an aptitude test with Process Street
• The Myers-Briggs / Jungian Types Personality Test
• Free aptitude test template: Big Five Personality Test
• Free aptitude test template: Holland Codes
• Free aptitude test template: Leadership Tools
• Free aptitude test template: DISC Assessment
• Free aptitude test template: IQ Test
• Superpowered checklists

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What exactly is an “audit“?

The International Organization for Standardization defines it as:

“[the] systematic, independent and documented process for obtaining objective evidence and evaluating it objectively to determine the extent to which the audit criteria are fulfilled.” – ISO, from ISO 19011:2018 – Guidelines for Auditing Management Systems

That’s another way of saying someone takes a look at what you’re doing, gathers some evidence, and compares that evidence to what you’re supposed to be doing (in other words, a set of clearly documented requirements).

In the case of ISO, these requirements are known as standards. ISO 9001 is a standard. ISO 14001 is a standard.

Importantly, this understanding of audit implies that there are a few main things being considered by the auditor:

• What’s documented by the company (e.g. internal processes, policies, and SOPs)
• Evidence gathered to support how these policies, procedures, and SOPs are implemented in practice
• The requirements defined by the ISO standard being audited against (e.g. ISO 9001)

Audits performed by companies to assess and analyze their own management systems are known as internal audits. Many resources for guiding companies on how to perform internal audits exist, and foremost of these is the ISO 19011 standard.

For most management system standards, internal audits are an important requirement. Even guideline standards like ISO 26000 for social responsibility depend on reports to evidence the success of their implementations.

As such, ISO 19011 defines a set of guidelines; a framework for companies to plan, implement, and improve upon their audit programs, for auditing the implementation of management systems.

Since the first edition of ISO 19011 was published in 2002, many new management system standards have been published.

These standards often share a common structure, including certain requirements, terms, and definitions being used. That means ISO 19011 can be used to devise highly economic audit programs, wherein knowledge and processes can be shared and applied across various management systems.

By considering how they might take a broader approach to management system auditing and integration, companies implementing ISO management systems stand to save time, money, and confusion when preparing for and implementing internal audits.

The goal of this post is to provide a spring-board for understanding ISO 19011, and how to get started with internal ISO auditing. In this post, I’ll cover:

• What is ISO 19011
• 7 principles of ISO auditing
• Different types of ISO audit
• Key elements of an ISO audit
• 8 free ISO audit templates

If you just want the free ISO audit templates, then here they are:

• ISO 19011:2018 Checklist for Auditing Management Systems
• ISO 9001:2015 Audit Checklist for Quality Management Systems
• ISO 26000:2010 Social Responsibility Performance Assessment Checklist
• ISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Audit Checklist
• ISO 27001:2013 Information Security Management System (ISO 27K ISMS) Audit Checklist
• ISO 14001 Environmental Management Self Audit Checklist
• ISO 9004:2018 for Sustainable Success in QMS Self Audit Checklist
• ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 Integrated Management System (IMS) Checklist

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Sometimes we all need a helping hand, whether it be choosing a meal at a restaurant or figuring out how to achieve our career ambitions.

When it comes to life itself, well, most of us are never really sure if we are on the right track, especially in today’s world where opportunities are endless and everything is moving at breakneck speed.

It can all feel rather overwhelming.

An increasingly popular method of addressing the general hardships of life is to work with a life coach – somebody tasked with helping you identify your goals and developing an actionable plan to achieve them.

In short, life coaches are there to help you address the big issues and challenges that life presents, so you can move forward with your head held high.

On the other hand, by taking on the role of a life coach, you must possess the qualifications, skill, and expertise to effectively encourage your clients to clarify their ambitions and provide them with the tools they need to pursue them.

We’ve gone ahead and created 5 checklists designed to empower life coaches and their clients so that both parties get the most out of the coaching process.

3 of the checklists are modeled after processes created by a handful of world-renowned life coaches – Brian Tracy, Lisa A. Romano, and Tony Robbins. The remaining two are more general checklists that can be used in almost any context.

If you want to dive in and go straight to the checklists, there are quick links right below. Otherwise, scroll down for a brief intro to each one.

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This is our third template pack composed of checklists that are designed to be worked through in conjunction with a specific property management tool.

We did a pack for Appfolio, Propertyware, and now here are 5 checklist templates for property managers out there who use Buildium to help them run their business.

Buildium is a powerful tool that addresses all aspects of property management.

The platform has built a stellar reputation largely due to its ability to facilitate the tenant-rental owner relationship by offering customizable rental applications, tenant screening, lease tracking, automated rent collection, and other handy features including a full general ledger for accounting.

It’s truly an end-to-end solution for property management firms of all sizes.

The software is entirely cloud-based, so requires no additional hardware or software installations and can be accessed from anywhere.

The platform is currently used by over 12,000 property managers and 175,000 property owners; numbers that will surely continue to rise as they gain popularity and look to bring in more enterprise-level customers.

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Accounting processes and workflows are at the core of any business. Sadly, 82% of businesses fail due to bad or negative cash flow.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

At Process Street we recognize the pivotal role small business accounting has for survival, profitability, and growth. We have therefore utilized our checklist approach to organize key accounting processes into a series of dynamic, efficient, and clear process templates.

All of these are free to use, ready to go, and can be edited to your needs, so there’s no reason to leave the failure of your business’ accounting up to chance.

This post will provide you with the following templates:

• Environmental Accounting Internal Audit Checklist
• Cash management process
• Small Business Budget Process
• Financial Plan Template
• Financial Planning Process
• Financial Audit Checklist
• Tax Preparation Checklist

This template pack can be used in conjunction with our other accounting processes template pack.

Let’s dive right in and organize your small business accounting.
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Offboarding a team member is never easy.

Relationships aside, the logistics of making sure that the ex-employee isn’t a security risk, their old tasks are accounted for and covered, and that there will be someone to take their place (with the appropriate training) is a tall order to meet.

That’s why this post will show you everything you need to know about offboarding an employee, including:

• Why offboarding is important
• How to effectively (and safely) offboard an employee
• How to make opportunities out of them leaving

I’ll even throw in some free templates you can follow to make sure that your offboarding goes right every time.

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We recently released 5 checklist templates designed specifically to help Appfolio users manage a handful of core property management workflows more effectively.

The following templates are a continuation of our effort to support property managers who are already using a software tool to manage their processes.

This time we’ve customized the templates for Propertyware users, and in the following weeks, we will release another set of templates designed for property managers who use Buildium.

Propertyware, a subsidiary of RealPage, is a cloud-based, end-to-end property management platform that helps you manage the entire renter life-cycle, from online payment processing to customer portals and work order management tools.

Based in San Francisco, California, Propertyware is one of the oldest full-service property management platforms out there, and has built a loyal customer base of over 2,000 companies.

If you are one of those companies, we hope you will find these checklists useful and integrate them to improve productivity and overall business performance.

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6.33 billion dollars is the value of 2018’s leading hotel brand worldwide. Let’s take a moment to visualize that. If you stacked one billion, one dollar bills, your money tower would expand approximately 644 meters into the sky.

To confirm then, 6.33 billion dollars is a lot of money.

Here at Process Street, we have asked ‘why’? Why is this leading hotel brand so successful?

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