Making work easier for professionals
All organizations are challenged with how to effectively capture and share the skills, experience and knowledge of their most senior and highest performing employees. As employees retire or move on to other opportunities, their knowledge and experience leaves with them. Capturing and sharing it is absolutely essential - even more so when you are a small business. ProcedureFlow is helping one such business in the United Kingdom do just that.
Gardiner Pole Systems Ltd. is a family owned and operated business with three generations working in the company - and two more waiting in the wings. They opened their professional window cleaning business in 1979. Changing from traditional window cleaning to water fed pole cleaning in 2001 led to an expansion into the design and development of a unique set of products for the industry, many of which have been awarded patents around the world.
Capturing knowledge and processes
Aspiring to make the working day easier for all professional window cleaners, Gardiner Pole Systems has built a world wide reputation of excellent customer service. ProcedureFlow is helping to give their employees the knowledge and ability to provide this level of service to each one of their valued customers.
- Improving Policies and Processes. Capturing their policies in ProcedureFlow allows them to easily find and improve unresolved problem areas, and to see how processes and policies are actually being put into practice. This has already allowed them to simplify processes in several key areas and stop relying on judgement calls.
- Pooling Knowledge and Experience. Once all processes and policies were documented in ProcedureFlow, employees quickly became engaged and were keen to contribute and collaborate on the project. This has resulted in a base of living knowledge that is far greater than any one person's experience.
- Reducing Escalations to Managers. Providing employees with documented processes and procedures allows them to make more informed decisions. This has greatly reduced the amount of technical queries and questions being raised to managers. To ensure compliance, employees are now including "as per ProcedureFlow" in the tracking system, so managers know that the correct procedures have been followed in each resolution.
- Reducing Training Time. Gardiner is a growing company and having access to documented policies, processes and best practices enables new employees to become experts faster. They spend less time in training and work with greater confidence and significantly less supervision.
- Improving Employee Engagement. ProcedureFlow has caught the imagination of Gardiner’s Customer Service Team and has helped them to see the crucial role they have to play. All Customer Service employees now contribute regularly and have been provided with a second monitor to allow for dedicated viewing of ProcedureFlow.
- Having Accurate and Up-to-Date Information. As their policies and processes change and evolve, employees now share the responsibility of keeping the documentation in ProcedureFlow current and up-to-date, and can ensure that their own knowledge is up-to-date as well.
