Every business, throughout its existence, amasses a plethora of information, including but not limited to, industry expertise, consumer insights, internal processes, and best practices.
Sadly, in many businesses, this information is not systematically recorded but instead exists in unconnected documents, Slack channels, and email threads. Employees waste hours each week looking for answers to common issues and learning the hard way by repeating others’ mistakes.
Keeping detailed internal records might seem like a tedious task, but it can end up saving you precious time in the event of a work emergency. Below, we will explain in further detail what internal documentation is, why it’s so important, and how to make it benefit your company.
The Concept of Internal Documentation
The term internal documentation refers to a written record of your company’s internal processes, principles, procedures, and best practices that may be used as a reference by your staff. Internal documentation should include any information that you may need to go back to in the future.
Forms of Internal Documentation
Internal documentation isn’t only for the IT department; it’s a strategy that may help every department in your business. It may take numerous forms besides printed pages of text, from written guides to visual aids like diagrams and checklists. Documentation for internal processes, projects, human resources, and individual departments is most common.
Investing in Proper Internal Documentation and Why You Should
Let’s be honest, not many enjoy the documentation process. Most people rush through it in order to check it off their list, while others don’t bother to record their progress.
Creating documentation for the sake of having it without a solid strategy in place is a waste of effort. However, this does not disprove the usefulness of documentation overall. Employee productivity is increased, new team members are brought up to speed more quickly, and the process of sharing internal information is simplified with well-organized and straightforward internal documentation.
Helpful Tips for Creating Internal Documents
The advantages cannot be realized only by the mere existence of internal documents. Your documentation has to be current, accurate, and presented in an accessible way if it is to be useful and provide actual value. So, to help you out, we’ve compiled a list of tried-and-true recommendations that were found to be the most effective.
Select the Appropriate Method of Documentation
There are a number of different approaches that can be taken to generate internal documentation. However, the approach that is considered to be the most effective is the one that enables editing in real-time, possesses a feature that enables quick searching, and is straightforward in terms of how the documents can be organized within it.
Keep your Documents in One Place
The key is to settle on a single solution, regardless of the documentation tool you end up using.
Provide your team with a centralized repository of information from which all questions and answers can be accessed with ease.
Avoid Documenting Everything for the Sake of It
Top-notch documentation doesn’t have to cover every little detail. When your internal documentation becomes too big, it becomes more challenging to manage and stay up-to-date. When your team needs an immediate solution, they probably won’t want to go through many paragraphs. Just the right amount of information should be recorded, with the target audience and function in mind. Keep your papers brief and precise, writing in the form of bite-sized bits of information.
Consider the Use of Images
Show, don’t simply tell. Use visual aids like mockups, images, and flowcharts to supplement the text and make your message clearer. Videos, GIFs, maps, presentations, and diagrams are just several examples of the types of interactive material that may be embedded straight into your documents using certain documentation technologies.
Draft Up Some Dynamic Records
Your organization’s internal documentation needs to reflect the current state of affairs. Make it simple to maintain your documents’ most recent versions. This means ditching inflexible file formats like PDFs and wikis in favor of more dynamic collaborative content. Encourage your staff to provide input and provide comments anytime they come across stale or incorrect information.
Find and Hire Curators of Material
All members of your team should participate in the documentation writing process. Still, without some kind of content vetting, chaos may rapidly ensue. So, make sure to put someone in charge of the documentation, the queries, and the comments.
Final Thoughts
Developing internal documentation is an ongoing process. Without the necessary procedure and tools, neither the authors nor the readers put in the effort to understand the documentation.
It may take time and persistence to establish the necessary habits and resources to overcome this challenge. But it’s worth it, because proper internal documentation may be one of the most efficient methods to increase productivity among workers.
