Sound technical content strategy can help your company navigate COVID-19.
The coronavirus pandemic turned the world as we knew it on its head, driving us apart, indoors, and into uncertainty. Businesses rushed to move processes and meetings online: We are all intimately familiar with Zoom now in a way we weren’t before 2020. Workers scrambled to make spaces in their homes to do their work sustainably, and no one knows how long these emergency measures will have to hold.
To put it mildly, we are living—and working—in strange times.
Many of us are fortunate enough to be able to work remotely, but many companies are still struggling to manage their team’s transition to remote work, particularly those that have historically prided themselves on their in-office company cultures. But now that working and collaborating remotely has become imperative to preserving public health, what can business leaders do to help their teams effectively through the transition?
The single most powerful tool businesses can bring to bear in times of change is accessible, quality documentation.
Obviously, we’re not entirely unbiased here, so let’s take a look at how content strategy can solve some of the common problems this pandemic has caused for businesses abruptly pivoting to remote work.
Access to organizational knowledge saves everyone time and the company money.
In the olden days when people could commute freely to offices and sit in the same conference rooms (let us pause for a moment of unexpected nostalgia for… 2019), workers could easily access organizational knowledge by simply stopping by a coworker’s desk.
Now, we unfortunately can’t rely on casual interactions to access information. We can’t walk to the office across the hall to figure out where to find or how to fill out forms for IT. We can’t easily demonstrate how to use company tools—both because we’re not working in-person anymore, and because the normal ways of handling our day-to-day tasks have changed.
Additionally, the people with answers—who, incidentally, tend to be the most senior, and highest-paid, on any team—have a whole new set of questions to answer every day about ongoing process changes. These team leaders don’t have the time to answer all these questions from every corner, every day.
Documenting organizational knowledge where everyone can access it saves everyone time, which saves the company money. Quality documentation can also make teams more productive, which can make the company money.
To transition smoothly into our new remote-working reality, employees need easy, on-demand access to information—especially when it comes to common processes.
Cut down on confusion and redundant work by prioritizing the processes you execute and teach most often.
High-quality, easily-accessible documentation helps your workers save time and energy on an ongoing basis. To get the most bang for your buck from documentation, prioritize writing documentation that addresses your employees’ most common or time-consuming problems.
Let’s take a look at a task all companies have to do: Onboarding new hires—now remotely.
New hires need company information, from how to take a sick day to how to set up a meeting. They need access to their accounts, such as email and internal systems. They’ll have questions about the setup process, too. In all likelihood, they’ll have the same questions their predecessors had before them. Ask yourself what the setup process looks like for new hires: Do new hires have to rely on their teammates to find answers to their questions? Do their teammates have to dig through emails to search for solutions to common problems?
Take a look at how much time your company’s supervisors, managers, and individual contributors spend finding information about how to complete these common tasks. By simply documenting these processes clearly in an easily accessible place, you can significantly reduce the amount of time and energy your most valuable employees spend on routine functions.
Let’s talk best practices for good documentation.
It looks like we’re all likely to be working remotely for a while, so it’s important to create a sustainable content strategy for your organization. Here are our tips for success.
- Set up a system for informational access, and make sure employees know where and how to find information.
- Establish guidelines around what should be documented and what shouldn’t. If you document everything and the kitchen sink, your employees won’t be able to find information or will be overwhelmed. Focus on providing clear, up-to-date documentation for your employees’ most common tasks, questions, or problems.
- Make a plan for maintaining information. After all, access to incorrect information can be worse than no information at all. Create a regular schedule for reviewing existing content and making sure it’s organized and updated with the latest information. If necessary, identify a dedicated writer or team member to update the documentation on a regular basis.
- Evangelize it. Documentation only helps if employees know how to use it and where to access it. Educate your employees about how to use your new documentation system to find information, and encourage teams to collaborate with writers to update the documentation regularly with valuable tribal knowledge.
Good documentation saves your employees’ time, which saves your company money. But more importantly, good documentation also alleviates frustration, inefficiency, and uncertainty. In 2020, a year full of constant changes and surprises, that’s invaluable—for companies and for workers. When your workers are empowered with accurate, easily-accessible information, they can focus on actually doing their work.
Help them, and your company, get back to business.
Have questions about how to improve your company’s content strategy and documentation? We’d love to hear from you.