Learn from examples! How to break away from job specialization through manual creation

2. How to break away from personalized work?

To eliminate the personalization of business, the following methods are effective.

●Creating and Utilizing Manuals

We create manuals that summarize procedures and knowledge for business, and by utilizing them, all members can share skills and standardize operations.

●Strengthening Communication

By providing regular meetings and opportunities for information sharing, we promote communication among members and facilitate the sharing and transfer of skills.

●Skill Up Support

By providing training and development opportunities, we ensure that all team members are able to acquire the necessary skills to perform their duties.

Our company has supported various companies in "creating and utilizing manuals".
As a typical example, let me introduce the efforts of a company that I actually helped to break away from the personalization of business through manual creation.

3. Can manuals change a company's culture?! Case study of an automotive manufacturer

A consultation from the quality assurance department of a certain automobile manufacturer.
The mission of the quality assurance department is to "support the work of the design department". At the time, the lack of knowledge transfer from veteran engineers to younger engineers was a challenge for the design department. In the midst of the urgent need for training of younger engineers, we wanted to document the know-how possessed by veteran engineers and promote technical transfer. However, it was difficult to ask busy engineers to create manuals, so they were looking for a company that could outsource the task.
It can be said that the "special nature of the work" of designing automobile parts and the "lack of opportunities for information sharing" were the factors that led to the personalization of the work.

As a result, we were able to achieve actual results by approaching it as follows.

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Below, we will explain the specific initiatives.

■Step 1: Understanding the Current Situation and Designing the Ideal State

First, we started with "understanding the current situation".
At Human Science, we do not simply write manuals without understanding our clients' concerns and what they want to achieve through existing manuals. We carefully consider the information and level of detail that should be included in the manual, and make sure to reach an agreement with our clients. If we neglect this approach, the manual will be created solely based on the intentions of the production company and will not lead to solving our clients' problems.

We have progressed with understanding the current situation through the following initiatives for this automotive manufacturer.

●Evaluation and Analysis of Existing Manuals

We have analyzed the manual provided by our customers to understand what is difficult to understand and why it is not being utilized.

▽Manual Evaluation Analysis Report

At our company, we analyze manuals from the following perspectives, after understanding who they are for and for what purpose they were created.

・Structure and Searchability
Reference: "Breaking Free from 'Can't Find What I'm Looking For'! Tips for Creating a Table of Contents to Improve Manual Searchability"
・Organizing Information
・Design and Layout
Reference: What Makes a Manual Easy to Understand?
・Writing Style

In this customer's manual, one of the major problems was that the level of understanding of the reader was not fully captured.
For example, even if only the procedure of "conducting an investigation" is written, without information such as "how to conduct the investigation?" or "should the results of the investigation be communicated to someone? Should it be documented and stored somewhere?", it will cause confusion for young engineers who are the readers. Without consideration for the reader, the conclusion will be "it's faster to ask someone" and this will become the cause of the manual not being established.

Of course, we have not been involved in automobile manufacturing as engineers, but we are helping to identify current manual issues from a professional manual perspective. There are many aspects that can be noticed precisely because we are in an objective position that is not familiar with the business.

●Survey and Interview for Design Department Members

While evaluating and analyzing existing manuals, we also collected feedback from members of the design department.
In this case, the quality assurance department of the client was questioning whether the design department actually needed manuals. Therefore, we conducted a survey with the following questions:
- Do you want to use a manual that summarizes the design process?
- In what situations do you want to use a manual?
- What kind of information would you like to see in a manual?
- What information is difficult to document and can only be taught verbally?

▽Example of Survey Results

In particular, we were able to receive valuable opinions from those in the field on questions such as "What kind of information should be included in the manual?" and "What information is difficult to convey without verbal instruction?" This information serves as important criteria for determining what to ask/write in detail when interviewing clients about their business or writing manuals.

▽Example of reflecting survey and interview results in a manual

■Step 2: Manual Creation

After evaluating and analyzing the existing manual based on an objective perspective by professionals, and conducting surveys and interviews with members of the design department (collecting feedback from the field), we began creating the manual. After that, we asked our clients to review the completed draft from the perspective of "whether the issues identified in the evaluation and analysis have been improved" and "whether the opinions gathered from the interviews and surveys have been reflected".
By conducting a "current situation assessment" and sharing it with stakeholders before starting the manual creation process, the perspective during the draft review will also become clear.

After going through this process, the first manual was completed and our clients strongly expressed their desire to be able to write manuals on their own for future use. This led to them being able to proceed with in-house manual creation.
However, it is difficult to immediately take the reins. First, we have divided the roles and responsibilities as follows:
・Organizing tasks: Client
・Creating manuals from organized information: Human Science Co., Ltd.

"Business organization" used our unique business organization sheet and proceeded mainly by our customers.
Reference: Just having a template is not enough! The first step essential for business manuals

At this stage, I remember that communication between customers became very active. During the meetings, there were more conversations between customers such as "I do this process in this way." "Oh, I see. I did it this way." "Each has its own advantages and disadvantages." In fact, the exchange of business information is often promoted during the process of creating manuals.

Afterwards, based on the business organization sheet created by the customer, we proceeded with manual creation at our company.
Even companies that are not familiar with manual creation can efficiently create manuals by dividing the work between professionals and processes. We received the following feedback regarding the role division for this project.

- The critical process of finalizing the manual was entrusted to professionals, ensuring the quality of the manual.
- Business improvement activities such as manual creation tend to be put off, but by relying on external partners, they were able to be carried out in a planned manner.

Currently, it seems that this customer is promoting the development of young employees through manuals.
They also mentioned that they would like to change the company culture through manual creation. They believe that not only learning by observing, but also improving communication between the teacher and the learner will further eliminate individualization of tasks. They have set a high goal of "changing the company culture".

We introduced a case study of an automotive manufacturer. How was it?
As a result of creating manuals, internal communication was promoted and our customer took a step towards breaking away from individualized work.

4. Summary

The personalization of tasks leads to disparities in skills within departments and decreases efficiency. Starting with the creation and utilization of manuals, strengthening communication within the team, and supporting the improvement of members' skills is an effective approach. This will lead to standardization and streamlining of tasks within the department, ultimately improving the overall performance of the department.
We would be delighted if our manual creation method could be of any help to your tasks.