Advance the commercial advantage of your company over others by using error-free, industry-specific work instruction templates. Boost your company’s ROI faster by making sure all the instructions in your tasks are clear, error-free and accessible anywhere, anytime, even when offline. With Lumiform, you can grow your firm to even higher performance levels just by making more detailed sequential workflows using quality work instruction samples.
Lumiform enables you to conduct digital inspections via app easier than ever before.
Get a kickstart with one of our +12000 ready-made and free checklists
A work instruction template is an outline or a document that provides clear, step-by-step instructions for employees. Its aim is to guide the employees and managers in completing a specific task in a systematic way to ensure its proper execution. This outline provides all the information an employee needs to complete the task, including:
Harvard Business Review suggests that these work instruction samples are also particularly helpful in streamlining communication for situations where multiple people are performing the same task and need clear instructions on how to do it correctly.
An example of when work instruction templates come in handy on the job is when you have several sales representatives who need to follow a specific procedure when making deliveries. Creating a work instruction template can make sure that each one knows exactly what they need to do in order for everything to run smoothly.
Work instruction templates can also be executed across almost all domains. They are, however, generally used by companies in the manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and restaurant business. These are the areas where managers often want to create consistency, transparency, efficiency, and standardization among their employees who perform certain tasks repeatedly.
Even as far back as 2,000 years ago, work instruction manuals or user guides such as the Antikythera Mechanism were already used to implement rules and procedures for a workforce. Since then, the evolution of work instruction checklists has led to a series of drastic changes to achieve higher efficiency in any organization.
Thanks to Frederick Winslow Taylor, known as the "Father of Scientific Management", today's software solutions are even more powerful. They can, among many things, give managers the ability to streamline their workflow and make sure that everyone is on the same page about what needs to be done during each task to complete it faster and properly.
1. The purpose of work instruction templates
2. Their importance in various industries
3. Industries that best benefit from their use
4. How to benefit most from work instruction templates
5. How to write error-free work instruction templates
6. The best tips for maximizing your work instruction template
7. Effortless, industry-specific work instruction templates that work
The purpose of work instruction templates is to first make sure that the tasks assigned to your team or subordinates will be completed correctly and consistently. The use of these work instruction samples also allow you to:
The use of work instruction samples is important because it’s the best way to ensure that the purpose, scope, and pre-requisites of all your tasks are indicated in one shared document for the workforce to refer back to any time. Here are more major reasons why the use of work instruction samples is crucial
Here are just some of the major industries that can best benefit from work instruction templates that are properly delivered:
Work instructions benefit you either as an employee or a manager mainly in:
Here are other benefits of work instructions to managers and employees:
Writing tasks using examples of work instruction templates can be very demanding, overwhelming, and time-consuming if your template is problematic. That’s why the importance of picking the right template can’t be overstated.
To make the template form-fitted to your tasks, here's a step-by-step guide on how to make your work instruction template effective.
When dealing with different sectors of the workforce, there’s always the risk of confusion when sharing step-by-step instructions. This can be solved by making sure that the examples of your work instruction templates have the right context.
To do this, you first need to identify the name of the tasks, and the names of those who will do them. Make sure you label the tasks according to who’s responsible. This way, you can achieve better accountability in deciding who, when and what should be done.
It’s important to phrase the instructions so they can be easy to read for others within your organization. Use your own writing style that is clear, concise, and friendly, but also remember to be clear about what you are telling people to do and what you are asking them to do.
This makes it easier to be understood and less likely for people to misunderstand the core objectives. It also makes you look more professional – your team or managers always want to read clearly written, easy-to-understand instructions.
Structure the content of work instructions depending on the job and make sure you enumerate the steps to be done for each task, as clearly as possible. In this step, you must include important elements and details, including workshop materials and references to make them understand the tasks better.
Add images, infographics, bullet points, or visual materials to give them a better idea of the direction your instruction is taking. This promotes better retention.
Using an app to pair with the templates will get your team to finish the work fast and correctly without the need for long hours of training. Just make sure you find one that’s user-friendly, intuitive, and has stellar features that can integrate with your systems in multiple languages and deliver better results.
Double-check mistakes and enhance the readability of the instructions. Remove jargon, and trim down convoluted sentences by using fragments, making sure that your work instruction templates are industry-specific.
This step would be the most important one because it lets a colleague or an employee run the sequence in the instructions and record the results. This will be the best way to detect gaps, check for errors, and clarify confusion in the sequential so you can reword them and ensure better execution when executed in the production.
After the work instructions have been completely perfected, save and send to the workforce so they can store a copy and read a reference when they need reminders of forgotten steps.
You can maximize the use of a work instruction template by always being as unerring, detailed, and clear as you can in writing it. You should also not overwhelm the text with unavailing information that creates confusion.
Here are more tips for making sure your template hits that direction:
Theory is almost universally different from practice, so it’s best to execute a trial run for the sequential tasks in your instructions first. This is the only way to know whether the way you organized the tasks or written them for the employees is clear. This way, you'll reach optimal levels of the team’s performance, knowing that the template has done everything it can to deliver the message right.
It makes no sense for human resources managers to use atemplate if it ends up compromising your bottom line. You can help your team be more effective and get more done when you have a report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into their work. As this happens with dashboards and data in your template, you can then confirm and compute the amount of time saved, finding out how the template is able to improve your sales.
Don’t forget to include the numbers of each user’s time limit. That way, you can average the exact time it will take for the task to be done and improve on them. If someone takes longer than expected on any given step, then you'll know right away and be able to adjust accordingly.
Work instruction samples are meant to clarify tasks for new hires. This means that most of the staff who will use the templates may be still in a bind on how to do the tasks in your work. Assuming that they already know the jargon can make your templates ineffective.
It’s safe to conclude that delivering consistent results that meet your company’s bottom line is the number one reason why every organization needs work instruction templates. This is because these templates are the best way to help the workforce reach 100% compliance with industry standards and reduce costly human errors that derail the trajectory of a company’s conversion targets.
Lumiform understands the importance of these variables so much, that it has designed a mobile app and desktop software to address these pressing pain points. This is also the reason why Lumiform designed its work instruction templates to be intuitive, easily scalable, and effective, increasing the bottom line with surprisingly simple, but remarkably powerful practical solutions.
In fact, with Lumiform, you get work instruction templates that will guarantee to:
You have questions or would like to schedule a personal demo? We are happy to help you!