Find out what you don't know by documenting current reality.

Chances are, what you think your staff do, and how you think they go about doing their jobs, does not reflect reality. It's time to uncover what is happening in your business!

With process mapping workshops, staff feel valued on seeing their reality unfold. The mapped processes become a clear visual representation of what staff do to get the job done. Show your staff you are listening by taking on board what they do and how they do it.

With receptive staff, you will be in a better position to implement change. With current reality documented, you will be in a knowledgable position to implement effective change. Win your staff over before introducing changes. Together, managing change shouldn't be difficult.

The purpose of a manual is primarily to mitigate downtime. Where health and safety or business continuity is concerned, it's also about mitigating risk.

A manual must solve problems as soon as practicable. Finding the solution to a problem must be no more than three page-turns away or three clicks of the mouse. The solution (procedure) must be easy to follow. It must solve the problem; allowing the person to resume work with minimal loss of time.

Improve productivity by putting clear, concise and easy-to-follow documentation in place.

Providing help-desk support can be expensive. Sure, you can track how well and how often your staff are helping clients. There is the feel-good factor that comes with staff-client interaction. And of course, the more you help, the better it feels!

Would it not be better if your clients didn't have to phone through the problems they are having with your software? After all, it's far simpler to provide users with what they need, when they need it?

With effective online help, finding the solution to a problem should be no more than three mouse-clicks away.

Reduce your support costs. Empower users with effective and accessible Plain English online help.

Don't get caught out with the 'buddy' system of training. The buddy system is prone to personality-based assessment. Where health and safety is important, the buddy system can lead to serious harm. In Court, the buddy system will be difficult to defend and may in fact demonstrate negligence.

Embrace competency-based training programmes. Build a set of training documents based on learning outcomes. Each document is tailored to its respective audience. Whether it's the learner, trainer, or assessor, each role receives targeted documentation.

With a competency-based training programme, you can also build in evidence of attendance and achievement. Deliver consistent training programmes across all your workplace sites with competency-based programmes.

A picture paints a thousand words. It results in a leaner document and connects with people in ways that copious pages of boring text can never acheive.

Help staff to get up to speed faster. Reduce human error by providing clear illustrations.

Take things a step further, and show staff and customers how to perform tasks. Watching a video demonstration enhances the effectiveness of any training programme.

Why provide expensive one-on-one training when you can record once and train many.

Operating a machine on a production line should be as easy as operating a phone app.

A human-machine interface should be simple to navigate and operate. It should be clear what the user can do with the machine, and it should be clear what the machine is doing.

Look and feel is important. The 'look' equates to appearance. The 'feel' equates to behaviour. Inconsistencies in appearance and behaviour make a product feel unintuitive. This leads to frustration, increased documentation costs, increased training costs, and lower productivity.

For increased productivity:

• standardise onscreen terminology on users' vocabulary
• use colour consistently to differentiate interactive elements from non-interactive elements
• use colours that are consistent with real-world cues, e.g., health and safety signage
• use, e.g., push buttons to express the action that the user can perform; not the current state of the machine.

With an intuitive human machine interface, you can eliminate poor design choices that will slow users down for years to come.

Empower users to work efficiently and effectively by giving them an easy-to-use human machine experience.

Adding clarity to the behaviour of onscreen controls enhances learning and productivity while reducing documentation requirements, training costs, and support costs.