Understanding best practice

Running a small business is going to be difficult but as it continues to grow and you start to gain more employees, you may reach a point where you need to involve best practice to help improve the small business. Choosing the right best practice program will increase employee productivity, decrease errors and product defects, and improve the overall business structure of your small business.

What is best practice?
Best practice is not new; it is just a new term. It simply means implementing a program or service that will improve your small business. Many of the programs that will help your small business include Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, Total Quality Management, and Behavior-Based safety. Best practice allows you to implement a program to improve your small business and set small, attainable goals along the way to make sure you have properly implemented best practice.

How do I implement a best practice program?
In order to get started with best practice, you can do your own research on a variety of different programs and implement it on your own or you have the option of contacting a professional organization. Contacting a professional organization is a great idea as they come with a new set of tools that you will find helpful for your small business. Talk to other small business owners in your industry to find out if they have implemented a best practice program. This is a simple way to find a good company to work with if you are interested in a best practice program.

How long will it take?
Depending upon the problems within your organization, it can take upwards of a year for a best practice program to work properly. It will require a total commitment from your staff and it will not be an overnight accomplishment. Many times companies will start out excited and enthusiastic about best practice, but they will lose this commitment after a couple weeks and you will be right back to where you started. As a small business owner, you need to focus on helping your employees understand the importance of best practice and you must look for ways to keep them motivated about it.

Becoming successful with best practice
In order for you to become successful with best practice, you must believe in the program and clearly show this to your staff. When people see that you really do believe in the program and you are committed to it, they will be inclined to follow you and they will learn how to have a stronger commitment to it.

You need to set goals for your employees that are attainable. Many times companies set their standards so high that their employees are unsure of how they can obtain them and they lose their motivation quickly. Set smaller goals that are attainable to avoid employee frustration. You can set a large goal, just make sure you have a bunch of smaller goals that lead up to it that larger goal so your employees don't lose hope in achieving the large goal.

Future benchmarking
Once you make the decision to implement a best practice program, this will be an on-going process for the company for a long time. It isn't something you can implement and then remove after a year. This will be something you need to use constantly to remove defects and to keep employee motivation high. Look for ways to adjust best practice in the future so it can adjust to technology and future business needs. A good best practice program will ensure proper productivity, reduce defects, and it will maintain production and efficiency.