Fabricating Cohesion: Why You Need SOPs for Consistency

Growing a retail operation, either incrementally for a single store or by opening new stores, often requires the entire team pulling in the same direction. But when everyone isn’t aware of the direction because processes and procedures are left to chance or not consistent, the business can suffer. Not having processes and procedures for key retail operational tasks, either new or existing, can cause frustration with employees not knowing what to do and how their piece of the puzzle affects the strength of the whole. And frustration can lead to employee turnover and ultimately unhappy customers.

Faced with their own issues of operational processes inconsistencies, four PaulB Hardware managers, merchandising manager Josh Weaver, Lititz store manager Corby Russell, operations manager Evan Stauffer and Mechanicsburg store manager Daryl Hurst, made creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) a priority for the operation.

PaulB, based in Lititz, Pennsylvania, has had formal SOPs in place since the operation opened its second location in Belleville, Pennsylvania, in 2008. But thanks to the diligence of these managers, three of whom attended the North American Hardware and Paint Association’s (NHPA) Retail Management Certification Program, they led the way in refining the operation’s SOPs to bring efficiency to all three PaulB locations.

The PaulB managers share their best practices for developing, implementing and editing SOPs that any retailer can utilize to bring cohesion and consistency, boost employee engagement and set the path for future growth in their operation.

Create Consistency

Likely your operation is already using SOPs, but maybe they aren’t written down or applied consistently. PaulB Hardware had been very process-oriented since its founding in 1947, but leadership needed to capture those SOPs to ensure they worked across locations.

In 2014, the company implemented Epicor’s Eagle point-of-sale (POS) platform, which created the hurdle of synergizing SOPs between the Lititz store and the Belleville store. To overcome those obstacles, Russell says the team rewrote many of the SOPs and started using WikiDot, a platform that hosts and supports numerous wiki-based web projects.

“We didn’t necessarily get rid of the old ones, but we started updating them and all the links in our system, which was very clunky at that time,” Russell says. “That’s when we started using WikiDot.”

Opening PaulB’s third location in 2021 in Mechanicsburg exposed a number of inconsistencies in the SOPs. Russell says while a certain process may have worked well at their Lititz location, they realized it might not work the same or at all at the company’s Belleview or Mechanicsburg locations.

“I was in charge of writing all the shop SOPs to give to Mechanicsburg and worked diligently for a year and a half getting them all developed,” Russell says. “But when we went to implement those SOPs, I realized they would not be effective, as they were location specific instead of process specific.”

Weaver says the team saw how SOPs were written from the perspective of each specific department and written for today, not tomorrow.

“My manager Daryl asked me what my first SOP looked like, and I realized they have changed a lot as I grew in my role and as I started to get feedback on them,” Weaver says. “We had been relying on tribal knowledge at each store through that season. As a leader, it’s easier just to train them through tribal knowledge or create a new SOP rather than reference the old one. And the more you do that, the less confident you become that what you have is right.”

The leadership team at PaulB Hardware came to the realization that the SOPs were necessary but that they needed to be centralized.

“About a year ago, we started the journey of shop synergy meetings and taking store specific SOPs and putting them side by side and having the conversations about pulling those into one SOP that works for all stores,” Weaver says. “That’s been a powerful thing.”

Centralize and Consolidate

Along with consistency, centralization is key to success in SOPs. Today, PaulB Hardware’s SOPs are written in Google Docs and Google Slides and stored in WikiDot, so managers wanting to add a new SOP to the system do not need to have computer programming experience. WikiDot allows you to mirror a Google doc without a link and will update in WikiDot as an update is made in Google.

“We link it to a Google Doc, but all the links are the same,” Russell says. “When it gets updated, it’s updated on all the links, and it works really well.”

The company now has an SOP process led by the operations team, which provides helpful insights on how each SOP will work at each of the locations. They also offer insights on areas where they don’t have experience, which Russell says is just as helpful to see potential flaws the SOP might hold for inexperienced employees.

“Thanks to the operation team’s experience, we can align the SOPs, which is powerful,” Russell says. “Even though the team is based at the Lititz store, they serve as a third party and provide a helpful angle to bring everything together. That neutral third party comes in as a clean slate, because sometimes when you’re in the mud, you don’t necessarily see the mud.”

Every week, senior leadership at PaulB Hardware comes together for alignment meetings where SOPs are reviewed and each manager provides feedback to make the SOPs as neutral as possible so they can be easily plugged in at any location. Weaver says there are some store-specific details that then go into an SOP in order for it to be successful, but they are as generalized as possible to be applicable in all stores.

“These meetings are extremely important to move the needle because the idea of trying to communicate all that through email or text is difficult to do,” Weaver says. “They are key to our success with SOPs.”

Weaver says the SOPs build on each other.

“If you start at the foundation and identify that first one, you can build on it to support team members as they advance in their roles. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure these SOPs connect in a way that’s clear to the learner,” Weaver says.

Continuous feedback beyond the alignment meetings is also crucial. Each PaulB supervisor has the ability to go into Google and tag the team with feedback and comments on an SOP.

“The feedback process is a big win with going to Google because if you don’t have a good way to provide feedback, there’s resistance and people won’t give it,” Weaver says. “Training coordinator Evan Holbrook and training assistant

Rodney Snyder have gone through all the SOPs at this point, and now they’re putting the SOPs on a calendar for reviewing twice a year.”

Russell says any supervisor can also submit a change.

“Submitting a change doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to happen, because as leadership, we approve the SOP,” Russell says. “But it’s another way for employees to offer feedback.”

Organize for Future Growth

Early on, all SOPs were kept on a massive list that was difficult to sort or search for specific SOPs. With the use of Google and WikiDot, the team at PaulB Hardware is able to link SOPs to various departments and purposes.

For example, if an SOP is applicable to paint, sales and service, there doesn’t have to be three separate SOPs but rather just one link to that SOP from the paint list, the sales list and the service list.

Russell says they are also working on creating bundles of SOPs that work together and breaking the SOPs into different stages and steps to be more easily digestible and applicable for employees.

“We also have something called 30/60/90, which provides all the information a new employee would need to know in their first 30 days, 60 days and 90 days,” Russell says. “All of these SOPs are going to be linked and will ultimately support an employee’s growth path.”

Earn Employee Buy-In

Once you have SOPs in place and a system to manage and update them, your employees need to actually use them in order for them to be effective. Weaver says how quickly employees adapt depends on a variety of factors.

“If the SOP makes an employee’s job easier, it’s going to get adopted much quicker. If it adds extra steps or makes it harder, it’s going to be a heavier lift to bring it on board,” Weaver says. “Sometimes employees don’t realize that the way they’re doing things may be impacting something down the line in a negative way. And by shedding light on that, it brings a willingness to do something a little different for the best of the team.”

While pushback is inevitable, Weaver says you can reduce it by prepping employees and getting their input ahead of time. Management doesn’t just ask input from experienced employees but also gains insights from inexperienced employees because they are able to provide an unbiased look at SOPs and whether they make sense to a new employee. The feedback process among employees is also key.

“Changes from that intentional feedback piece you could have infused well before it was rolled out but you don’t implement end up being 10 changes to the SOP after it is rolled out,” Weaver says. “You get done training one thing, and then you have to change it right away.”

While a new employee may not fully understand the full scope of the SOPs when they first start, it provides them with foundational knowledge, Russell says.

“But then you hand them the SOP in the situation, and now it makes sense,” he says. “It’s a balance of prior to and during the training of repeating and teaching them to go to the wiki to look for the SOP they need in that moment.”

The PaulB managers have also learned that no matter how much you plan, manage and train, writing an SOP requires being specific, but you can’t build in every scenario, Russell says.

“When you start building in too many scenarios, you force the employee to not think out of the box for things like customer service,” he says. “One of the SOPs we struggled with the most with this was the return policy. Josh did a very good flow chart but we ended up adjusting it multiple times and probably overdid it. There’s definitely some SOPs that are more standard operation guidelines because we really want to promote taking care of the customer first rather than following steps.”

Hurst says they always remind employees that if an SOP does not allow them to provide the level of customer service they think they need to, leadership is always open to hearing feedback.

“We make sure employees know customer service comes first,” Hurst says. “Don’t let the process get in the way.”

Just Start

When it comes to starting or revising your own SOP strategies, Hurst says it’s important to just start.

“You’re not going to get there in a day, it’s a long journey, but you just need to take that first step,” Hurst says. “Oftentimes, we may have more processes in place than we tend to give ourselves credit for, so starting might just mean writing those things down.”

Hurst also advises that whoever leads the SOP strategy should be someone who is willing to take ownership and with a passion for processes. Leadership should also buy into the SOPs.

“Even as leaders, while we have the autonomy and even responsibility to break outside the process when that needs to be done, it’s best that we follow SOPs as well,” Hurst says. “I can’t remember where I heard it, but there’s a saying that says ‘Processes are to business what code is to computers.’ You expect a consistent outcome because there’s code there that’s making it happen. Delivering your product or service properly time after time, without fail, is the foundation of excellent customer service. Systems are what allow you to guarantee that.”

SOPs That Fit Each Learning Style

The team at PaulB Hardware approached training and standard operating procedures (SOPs) by addressing the different styles of learning—hands-on, visual and auditory—and implementing linear and nonlinear learning. The chart below visualizes those approaches.

The level of the SOP will also determine whether it is mostly images, mostly text or a combination of the two.

“For more entry-level employee SOPs, those are much more visually based, but as you get more in depth and start bumping up levels to more in-depth processes, they tend to convert to more text-based SOPs,” Weaver says.

The team has also discovered there are considerations in the presentation of and access to the information.

“We have to consider whether they have access to a computer or email, or if a physical, printed copy is a better option,” Russell says. “We are trying to hit as many of those learning styles as possible because so many times the SOP fails simply because it’s not presented in a way the employee can understand it and go with it.”

Learning Styles:

• Hands-On learning:

  • Hands-on learning allows employees to physically go through the SOPs out on the salesfloor.

• Visual Learning

  • For visual learning, many of the SOPs include videos, charts and graphs.

• Auditory Learning

  • With auditory learning, managers will instruct an employee verbally.

• Linear Thinking

  • Absorb information in a structured, step-by-step and sequential manner.

• Nonlinear Thinking

  • Absorb information in flexible, self-directed learning paths.