In July 2018, the number of active Google Drive users surged into the billions.

This means the number of users had increased by 200 million within just one year.

One reason for Google Drive’s success is its extensive usability. You can send emails, create spreadsheets, arrange meetings, update your calendar, create slideshows, and produce text documents.

It is with this function, produce text documents that we begin this Process Street article comparing a Google Docs checklist with a Process Street checklist.

You see, like Process Street, Google has recognized the benefits checklists bring at both a business and a personal level. Google has made it possible to create checklists with its text document function.

Our questions driving this article are:

• Why would you want to create a Google Docs checklist?
• How would you go about creating a Google Docs checklists?
• Is a Google Docs checklist right for you and your business?

If you are new to checklists, Google Docs, and Process Street, then this is the article for you.

You can click on any of the below subheaders to jump to the relevant section.

• What is a Google Docs checklist?
• Make a checklist in Goole Docs
• The benefits of using a Google Docs checklists
• Checklist template: What a checklist template is and our top Google Docs checklist templates
• Google Docs vs Process Street
• Process Street: How we can help you with your checklists

Shall we get started?

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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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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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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 customized the templates for Propertyware users, with a focus on keeping rental processes running smoothly.

SWOT: Whether or not the acronym conjures images of riot gear and armored vehicles for you, we are of course talking about a business methodology for evaluating the internal and external factors governing the performance of your business.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. A SWOT analysis is a way of evaluating a part of (or even a whole) business, based on the criteria of each of the words in the acronym.

If you just want to dive right in and skip the details, here’s the template, as promised:

When you actually run it, conditional logic will show only the tasks relevant to you, to save you a whole lot of manual work and messing around in the long run.

If you’re interested in learning how to use the template, plus some best practice SWOT principles, real-world use cases and some post-SWOT advice, read on.

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A book about disasters, human error and a simple tool that could well be the answer

Surely we don’t need any more bureaucracy, do we? Writer and surgeon Atul Gawande says yes, in fact we do. Box-checking and form-filling are often seen as the direct opposites of efficiency, but how many skyscrapers just tumble down out of the blue? Not very many, and The Checklist Manifesto explains why. It all comes down to recognizing that checklists are a powerful weapon in the fight against human error. In a series of anecdotes/case studies spanning from Gawande’s familiar operating theater to the secretive world of venture capitalism, the author makes rock-solid arguments in quick succession about why we all need more checklists in our lives. But not just any old checklists…

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Click here to get the interactive checklist

Warren Buffet is known as a god among investors and entrepreneurs. He is currently the 3rd richest person in the world and the Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company that owns hundreds of brands including GEICO, Dairy Queen, Heinz and has major investments in American Express, Coca-Cola, and IBM.

Warren Buffet is known for making stellar investment decisions. Putting his money on business fundamentals and long-term success rather than worrying about new fads and market movements.

So, what is the secret to Warren Buffet’s success?

In Robert Hagstrom’s book The Warren Buffett Way, John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York, 1994 he reveals a checklist that Warren Buffet uses when making investment decisions.

Obviously, this is a high-level check before due diligence but it’s the first step Warren Buffet takes when making an investment decision. Read it, use it.

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The most useful Checklist Manifesto quotes

After publishing the Checklist Manifesto Review and following up with the Checklist Manifesto Summary, I thought it’d be fun to share the most memorable The Checklist Manifesto quotes by surgeon Atul Gawande. The book is packed full of useful knowledge, and not just from the author himself.

He interviews professionals from the man responsible for foolproof checklists given to pilots flying incredibly complex Boeing airplanes to a group of high-powered venture capitalists. All the people in the book have something in common – they want to reduce risk. And Gawande himself, like every human being with a will to survive, is no stranger to risk reduction. For him, however, it’s vitally important.

The Checklist Manifesto is the story of how this simple checklist was made.

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