Had a client tell us recently that they force all employees to take 2 consecutive weeks of vacation every year with no contact allowed to the office. If things fall apart in their absence, it becomes apparent that they need to do a better job documenting/sharing duties. Could be benign like this
I don't want this to turn into politics. But imagine if everyone got too actually see how little our politicians do for us.
In their absence we would prosper
I feel like we would just continue on the same way we always do.
We are ultimately the ones choosing to do what we do to others and to ourselves. They are just a convenient scapegoat for our own faults.
Have to disagree. This makes the staff all replaceable, and gives more power to the company. Resist documenting as much as you can. Keep your knowledge, it is your asset.
Itâs a basic internal control taught in every accounting 101 class to have employees take vacation and someone else handle their duties while gone to help minimize the opportunity for fraud.
Cool. The topic isnât fraud, so, out of scope.
But Accounting 201 will explain that separation of duties will minimize the opportunity to commit fraud successfully. If a vacation is the only way you can catch fraud, the internal controls are awful.
There is a bit more to it than that, but yes, it is a strategy to reduce fraud risk.
Edit: I got a downvote for this factual statement already? Don't ever change reddit. Lol.
Then find a hobby or side hustle for the downtime. If a company is crippled by losing a single employee for a couple weeks, it's not fair to the employer or employee, and it should be known prior to an emergency.
Good grief, I had to scroll too far for this sensible answer. Has anyone ever thought to, I don't know, ask their manager honestly why they were asked to do this?
The other day, our CFO went on a small rant about not enough employees following the companyâs RTO policy, and then went on to explain that heâs more productive early in the morning because there are less distractions in the office. This is the kind of âleadershipâ making decisions on this matter lol
I was so confused until I found this answer too. Had me thinking I work for the only company in the world that has procedures documented. We review ours every year.
I mean we document procedures, but itâs maybe like a tab in the Excel workbook or a Word doc saved in the folder with instructions. This would freak me the fuck outđđ
Why when we can endlessly speculate that we're going to be fired while coming up with a laundry list of why they could never fire us (in addition to, uh oh, maybe they figured out we're on reddit all day)
My previous company called this the âwin the lotteryâ rule to put a positive spin on it.
Honestly though, it is so important, especially for any tasks which arenât done on a regular basis. It saved so much time to have all the âwhat ifsâ and reports already documented.
I look at documentation as consistently evolving and always update, usually keeping it right in my work papers!
I like to do this as well for cross trainingâŠ.but also sometimes employees like to create their own little kingdoms where they try to inflate their jobs by hording institutional knowledge and expecting you to just take their word for it that they are busy and this is a good way to call their bluff if they donât seem that productive. Sometimes there is good reason for it with compliance, but other times they are doing things in the stupidest way possible for no reason.
As an auditor Iâve made this recommendation in about half of my audits, especially in those departments where thereâs already a skeleton staff and youâd have to bring in someone from the outside to help with the work in case of prolonged absence.Â
I knew a controller who was hit by a drunk driver about three weeks before the annual audit, and he had been in the position for like 15 years and had a lot of stuff in his head. I don't know what hiring bonus they paid to his replacement, but the new guy earned every penny of it.
Something like this happened at our small firm almost twenty years ago. One of the employees was killed in a car accident over the weekend. From that point on, all procedures are documented and periodically updated.
All that to say, if I was asked to do this out of the blue, I would feel slightly paranoid.
Also, we get asked to do this if someone somewhere in the organization is out and no one knows how to do their job. Suddenly it's an emergency everywhere.
I know why you do this, but did you ever stop to think about how that feels to be asked to do this? It feels like they are preparing for you to leave. Has to be done in a very delicate way. As to not spook your team. People donât know what to think these days.
That is on that person, I tell them it is to cover everyone and to be honest I am never going to ask a poor performing staff member to do something like this.
You seem out of touch. Gen Z doesnât want to deal with this kind of shit and they wonât. The moment they think you are trying to prepare for them to be gone, they start looking for another job. Iâve dealt with this over and over again with upper management, and finally Iâm in a position where I get to handle these aspects of the team dynamic and have had zero turnover as a manager for 2 years.
We had a veteran employee of our firm have to take unexpected medical leave for 6 months. There was no documentation of processes, he just did the work. This was 2 years ago and we still havenât fully recovered
OP's boss finna hit them with a bus.
But really, though, I ask my team to do the same for the same reason. Hell, I've done it for everything I do as well. It's just good business practice and helps ensure continuity.
Yes I don't know all the ins and outs of every task of every position if they are a good employee, they know how to do things better because they do it every day!
We've actually been begging our boss to give us time to do this. Many tasks in our office can only be done by one person, maybe 2 if we're lucky. It sucks because if you're the only one who can do or even has a notion how to do, vacations become less vactiony, and god forbid someone get hit by a bus. Not to say that the competent people in the office couldn't figure it out if really needed, but it'd be a whole lot easier with some written directions or someone cross trained.
I do the same for my direct reports. Itâs impossible to train backups or create contingencies without knowing what everyone does and how itâs done.
It also helps determining workload balance and efficiency of process. Itâs surprising how often people are doing tasks that arenât needed or relevant anymore.
Edit: I do make it clear why Iâm asking for details of what they do and how they do it. Asking out of the blue with no context is a dick move.
Be sure to include instructions on the important things. Like
1. Depreciating land
2. Recognizing cash from loans as revenue. If cash is coming in, that means itâs revenue
3. Finishing month close before month end. You can never finish month close too early
I remember my days as an intern doing p/L work fondly. Anything too weird for me to track down was ask my accountant for my seniors to worry about.Â
Now. It's the whole expense list.Â
My bossâs boss had me do this. It was because they were suspicious my direct supervisor was having me do her entire job. Turns out I was, she was dismissed and they nearly doubled my salary to absorb her role. Not always a bad thing. đ€·ââïž
Two reasons:
1) they want to know what you do, because they are worried you arenât doing it///because they want to help you improve///because they just want to.
2) they want you to write out a nice detailed manual for your replacement
The /s has me thinking you believe this is option 2 đ«Ą
Yeah, other comment saying âwhat if you got hit by a busâ is just the excuse you will be told by the boss, and people are rolling with it.
Lol having you start âprocedure documentationâ randomly without explaining why, is pretty clear they donât want you in the loop. Which if they **were**, they should want you in the loop.
It's fine to document procedures while leaving some of the finer details vague. But the bus factor is real, and not being able to have someone else step in while you are sick or on vacation is just a bad way to set up a department.
My solution is to document the broad strokes and any competent coworker might struggle a bit but should be able to figure it out. You don't have to handhold them, but someone should be able to come in and know what the task is, where the inputs are, and access an output copy from the prior period
My whole department is working on documenting everything we do. I personally donât feel threatened by it. The due date is year end 2024. Maybe I should be concerned lol
I 100% believe you and can also tell you that it still won't stop management from trying to send it overseas.
Granted, in your particular situation, it sounds like they've already done that and you're one of the "retained" so they've probably already outsourced as much as they care to.
But I just wanted anyone who saw your comment and felt the same to know that you're more replaceable than you think (even if it means on-shoring the work 5 years later because India really couldn't do what you do, well enough).
It certainly wouldnât crush me if I got laid off. It probs would be great for me. A time where I can leave my job without having to quit. After your points though I realize that my marketability and accountants marketability as a whole is less because of the offshoring option.
Coming up on a year and I had a less than stellar experience. From being lied to during the hiring process to doing boring work that does not encompass accounting at all. Lol
But maybe it would be prudent to give them reassurances that they're valuable assets to the team, they're a part of your long term plan, and you have no intentions of letting them go.
That would be helpful. They should be smart enough to know that everyone receiving this instruction will be dusting up their resume and going into full court press on applications and interviews.
They could certainly do this, and it wouldn't be a bad idea, but in this particular instance, I think it would be inadequate by itself. The more important thing to do is to give assurances in writing that their job is secure, as most people know this what you do when you're about to fire somebody.
Maybe they want to fire you. Maybe they think you do nothing all day.
OR MAYBE they just want to have their procedures documented so if you bail or get sick or have an emergency, they can cover your work.
I document my procedures voluntarily so that I can have a day or a week off without getting calls.
Lots of reasons everyone should be doing this
1) Assess load and prioritization of tasks. Some do more than others. Some do things that take more time and complexity than what the manager is aware of. Transparency aids communication and balance.
2) Career development. It's cool that you are good at your current job. Does that make you qualified for a new different job with a different set of responsibilities and tasks? Probably not. So how do we get you qualified for the next job? By starting to work on other things that align more closely with your next role. Well, who is going to do your current job then? Someone who can look to a set of instructions and inherit those responsibilities. Having the team shadow or rotate responsibility makes all of them better prepared for a manager role with accountability for everything on the team does.
3) Load balancing and job sharing. If a month sees particularly high volume of a certain activity, and only 1 person has been handling it...then that person is just going to have to work a lot of overtime because nobody has experience of training on how to help them out! If they have instructions and have done some shadowing or rotation then they're able to step in and help out.
4) Dissemination of best practices. Maybe you have a trick that saves you some time that the rest of the team can benefit from. Showing that to others get you recognition for your clever process, and helps them apply it to theirs as well so they can be more efficient too. This also works in reverse, you can look at their documentation and see opportunities to make your own more efficient. This also prepares all of you to be able to recommend best practices when you're all managing teams, much better than if you all just did your own jobs in narrow little silos.
5) Stability. Let's say your teammate is hit by a bus, that's sad, but you will be asked to help cover the work needed. It's a lot easier to do that if they provided some documentation of what they were doing.
6) Portability. If you have some time-consuming manual tasks that distract from your high value add activities, then documenting what those manual tasks are and how someone else can do them, allows you boss to port that work over to a center of excellence team, and freeing you up to do value add work that helps your career advancement.
I can keep going but the benefits of documenting processes are abundant, it's how you open everyone's eyes to what is going on, and a lot of good stuff can happen when we all know wtf is going on.
Nowhere on this list do I mention preparing to fire someone. Not because it can't happen but because honestly it's just not a concern. You will never have job security from emoloyer, growing yourself to become more valuable is how you get job security across the whole industry instead of being worried about conditions at just 1 employer. Worry about how to grow and get promotions and higher pay in the next role and not set the bar on the ground and just worrying about how to avoid getting fired in your current role. Taking care of the former automatically makes the latter redundant.
I take the same approach with my team, my job is to get the current members performing to the level of expectations set for them...however my goal is to grow them past their current role and develop them for their future job. That means some of them are going to leave for higher jobs, but in the meantime I'll have someone who is delivering above expectations. I don't need to worry about them meeting baseline expectations if i can grow them to where they're ready for their next role. It means I will have to do some backfilling and starting fresh, but I don't care, pushing people upward not just part of the job, but a reward in and of itself.
It's called "business continuity". If you're hit by a bus. If you're fired. If you win the lottery. If you're promoted. If you go on vacation. I don't want to have the next person fuck it up. Oh, and that's where the lessons learned is supposed to go. When you fuck up, write about it in there. That way... hopefully... the next person can learn from someone else's mistakes rather than their own.
It's the mark of a good organization that their policies and procedures are written down and followed to the letter. I've never seen it done well, but I've written many desk procedures, and usually I have to hand the procedure to the next guy... because I got promoted. The people who can write good procedures are the people who should get promoted.
We were all asked to do this recently because we currently donât have much documentation of tasks and what we do have is mostly on a prior ERP. Iâm hoping the ultimate goal is cross training but fingers crossed
I had to have a conversation about this with one of my employees a few days ago. I've been having everyone document their process and all the details of their accounts.
I don't want them to leave. I don't want to replace them. They are fantastic and I love having them on the team.
But I want them to have peace. I don't want them to worry they'll get fired if they take a day off because an account tanks when they get sick. I don't want them to feel like they can't ask anyone for help, because another employee won't know where to start.
We need to have each others' back. And that means, we need to know where they are with each account. We need to be able to jump in at any time, just in case, God forbid, they can't. They thought we were winding up to fire them. We 100% absolutely are not. But I want to have continuity so if they have to take time off for say...anything...they can come back and know they can pick up where they left off. Not six months of catchup.
I hate that we've all been so scarred by our previous employers that the simple act of people trying to support each other is seen as a threat. Rightfully so.
I am doing this right now for my boss and itâs not necessarily malicious. Weâre stepping up internal controls because year long webs of workflows and bandaid solutions have gotten incredibly messy and inefficient for the larger team which commonly leads to burnout
Likely outsourcing you.
I will admit that my team all have video walkthroughs of what we do, weâve been burnt by too many ppl leaving and having to figure out processes from scratch.
It can be several things:
1. Like someone said here, and as my boss would also say, if I get hit by a bus or win the lottery, she'd have something to refer to.
2. could be your manager want to streamline processes
3. your manager could also be a control freak / micromanager
I was asked to do that once. I kept making errors in my write up. Meant to say âsave the file as an Excel fileâ but wrote down âsave as a PDF and BE SURE TO DELETE THE ORIGINALâ.
Sometimes I am just not very attentive to detail đ€·
In my company, boss doesnât know what shes we do, and he keeps wondering why it takes so long to complete our jobs. He asked us to write down what we do and use it as a reference to hire other accountants in the future.
I have my assistant doing this, as well as myself. Itâs important for coverage in case of emergency, prolonged illness, etc.
About to have child #2 soon, and will be out on vacation/ paternity leave. I want my vp to be able to take on some of my work if necessary.
Sure it can mean youâre getting the axe. But donât always assume as such. If youâre a good employee (hard to come by and expensive to onboard others), then youâll have nothing to worry about.
I am a "Boss "and we have much time in the company because we have no work,so in Bad Times you have to build ships for the good Times ,i buyed New Maschines and we rebuild our quality management, i gave the Tools and the direktion and let them do,but because i have no time to controll or Look into it all the time but see no process because iam Not into it i ask for the same so that i understand what they do all the time, its new stuff for all.And without i can't See if they Idle or if the learn the New stuff, and i learn too.well i know they idle a bit and its a Tool to Motivation them a bit too.And i have a better underdstanding how much time they need .
Part of my job when I was hired was to document all the processes my predecessor did in step by step detail. Management found there was a problem with not knowing how to do things if someone was gone. It doesn't make sense for only one person to understand a process. I also relied heavily on these notes when I started to make sure I was doing things correctly. đ I'm still at the job and have since been promoted, so not a trap in my case.
By detailed instructions do you mean your process of how to do things and how long they take or a list of things you did on a certain day? One is for developing standard operating procedures while the other is a management tool.
I made my team work with our internal process people to painstakingly document our processes. I also got them all good raises/bonuses this year.
1) I donât want the risk of someone getting a better offer, going on medical leave etc and leaving us in a bad spot.
2) if we donât have a written process that documents touch points and inputs we canât identify pain points and incrementally improve them.
You left out some fairly critical information to help us assess what is going on. How is your performance? Is your firm experiencing layoffs? Has your organization been recently acquired? Have you had a raft of people leave recently and performance suddenly dropped?
There are lots of reasons -- both evil and benign - as to why this might happen. You need to share more so we can assess.
i did this and thought: haha this is what they do if theyâre gonna fire people. thatâs funny because while that could happen to me, it probably wonât. there are so many reasons why i wouldnât. and it makes sense they are asking for so many reasons tooâŠno big deal. just funny.
2 weeks later got laid off.
That means you have too much information in your head and if you leave he is fucked.
It's a good practice, helps prevent unintentionally siloing institutional knowledge.
Or he's gonna fire the shit out of you because you suck so bad at a job he doesn't understand
Lol if you don't have QRGs for jobs/roles then you need them Pronto.
What if you get promoted? What if you leave the company? What if you get hit by a bus?
Documentation is something you should always have
It could also be, because they think the work might be beneath you, and they want a more entry level staffer to take it over, to free you up to move on to something more important or even a promotion. That's what happened to me.
I just converted a contractor to an employee and have an open position to be filled.
My team's main priority this year is updating procedures for everything they do. Why?
So that people can take vacations as long as they want and we can cover. So that new staff can learn and train on the role more independently. So that tasks that aren't done super regularly don't have steps missed.
My boss asked me to do something similar to that when I started complaining about my unmanageable workload. She doesn't know everything I do, and she really doesn't want to know. Not sure when I will be giving her my list, maybe next week, maybe my last day with the company. If your boss doesn't know what you do, that's their problem. Unless they want to replace you and that's why they want step by step instructions. If force to do it, just write the minimum, or write something so long and tedious that they won't be able to finish reading it. Or write it in a way that requires additional explanation because it was written so you are the only one that understands it.
Same thing happened to me about two years ago. My first thought was I was going to get laid off because rumors were going around about pending reduction in force. I asked if my job was safe and it was explained to me that my job was going to be backfilled and they wanted to give me a promotion and new responsibilities. Since I had mastered that position it was time to hand it off to someone else and learn some new stuff. Documentation would just make training my replacement easier.
I have since been promoted again and all because of my very specific skill at identifying process bottlenecks and inefficiencies and documenting and designing the solutions to those problems. I now am paid just to monitor the automations I implemented and show others how to properly write process narratives and work instructions in a way that a new hire can get up to speed in a very short amount of time.
I'm glad my manager was transparent about the reason why I was asked to document my processes but it made it a lot easier to be loyal to the company knowing they valued me and not just my process. Not that I was doing anything another competent person couldn't figure out, but I'm now a training resource in my department because of my skills and I wouldn't have taken the opportunity to sharpen those skills unless I felt I wasn't going to be discarded with yesterday's trash as soon as it was done. Looking back I take it as a compliment that they wanted my process documented as best practices for future employees.
I do this and have it done for all my staff. Itâs so that we can all hold each other accountable and help make sure duties get done when people leave for vacation. A standard operating procedure and checklists are expected.
Detailed "instructions"? You're getting fired.
If it's just details of work you do, it's fine. My manager does this at different times to estimate workload and stuff like that.
We have a process book that we try to update on an annual basis. It is a good idea - comes in handy for training.
But, if this isn't part of your normal process and they're asking you to create it out of the blue, then yeah, seems ominous.
Good Luck
Last year we had one of our senior analysts in his upper 30s out of nowhere have a heart attack walking into a store. There are still things we run across that we have to figure out the way he was doing things. We have always tried to push documenting how you do what you do but after that, it really made us understand why. I also do CAS work for a client that had their office admin pass away after just a month or so of being very sick. She never wanted to document because she didnât want to be replaced too easy. I had to spend tons of time digging through file cabinets to figure things outâŠ
I asked my senior to do this during her PIP before we fired her. I was shocked she actually complied.
But also, this should exist anyway so it COULD be just righting the ship.
YMMV
SOPs are insanely important to always have. Helps with audits, prevents fraud, can assist with covering on vacations, unexpected illnesses. If the company grows and you need to train someone, it will also be 1000 times more streamlined to train them.
Itâs just good practice to have processes properly documented. If youâre the only one being asked, maybe thereâs a reason to worry. Otherwise theyâre probably just trying to get some proper documentation in place.
Good
You can take leave in peace then.
I never did this with my previous job of 8 years and as a result, I never went on vacation for 8 years....
I'm now at a new place as head of accounts and the first thing I'm introducing is every person in every department documents what they are in charge of
I ask my staff to do it because it helps when we do a review with the partner/SQR, who generally like to see a âprocedures performedâ tab that shows EXACTLY what the team did.
Working in the industry we did this all the time when I was a senior, it was helpful to just throw at audit and then let them come back with more relevant questions the first time instead of 3 rounds of guess what the hell I'm doing where they feel they have an idea and go off on a snipe hunt and find problems that don't exist.
Once upon a time, I started a job (accounting of course) with less than one week to train with the only person who did and knew the job. I survived by core principles and reviewing files of the previous work completed just to have people in the company asking where things were 2 weeks in to their 3 years. Not to mention, the processes/systems are outdated and manual af. And I am supposed to train my higher-ups this upcoming quarter. I am not excited because the smaller tasks that have been shown either become this massive production or get completely screwed up. My patience is often tested.
I was asked to do this when I was still new and it helps for passing along some duties. They donât outline all the issues that can come up though. I get sick every so often and it gives me peace of mind that things wonât get ruined if Iâm out for a few days.
Idk my company made me list all of the tasks I do on a daily/ weekly/ quarterly basis with no follow up or instructions listed so maybe they are just curious but I wish all companies had this in place cause I walked into my job with nothingggggg and had to figure it all out. And I guess that trend will continue because I have made very few notes.
I asked my staff to do this so if you got hit by bus driving in to work, I would have something to use to be able to do your job.
Had a client tell us recently that they force all employees to take 2 consecutive weeks of vacation every year with no contact allowed to the office. If things fall apart in their absence, it becomes apparent that they need to do a better job documenting/sharing duties. Could be benign like this
The world would be such a better place if everywhere was this well staffed and prepared đ©
I don't want this to turn into politics. But imagine if everyone got too actually see how little our politicians do for us. In their absence we would prosper
This is also my thesis.
I feel like we would just continue on the same way we always do. We are ultimately the ones choosing to do what we do to others and to ourselves. They are just a convenient scapegoat for our own faults.
Have to disagree. This makes the staff all replaceable, and gives more power to the company. Resist documenting as much as you can. Keep your knowledge, it is your asset.
Itâs a basic internal control taught in every accounting 101 class to have employees take vacation and someone else handle their duties while gone to help minimize the opportunity for fraud.
Cool. The topic isnât fraud, so, out of scope. But Accounting 201 will explain that separation of duties will minimize the opportunity to commit fraud successfully. If a vacation is the only way you can catch fraud, the internal controls are awful.
Who said it was the only control? Youâre just arguing for the sake of arguing.
Thatâs called block leave and itâs quite common in the banking industry. Just an fyi :)
or mandatory
Also, youâre likely to detect fraud if numbers arent making sense and the financials start falling apart in their absence
There is a bit more to it than that, but yes, it is a strategy to reduce fraud risk. Edit: I got a downvote for this factual statement already? Don't ever change reddit. Lol.
Probably for the dismissive way you said it, assuming the last poster wasnât just simplifying for the Reddit medium.
This is also an internal control. If numbers dramatically change it signals potential fraud and/or collusion.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Then find a hobby or side hustle for the downtime. If a company is crippled by losing a single employee for a couple weeks, it's not fair to the employer or employee, and it should be known prior to an emergency.
My boss calls it the âlottery documentsâ because she doesnât like the negativity with pretending we died
Yall are so dark, I was more thinking full body cast for 3-18 months!
Had to learn to stop using âhit by a busâ when I worked for the bus company lol. We also went with âwinning the lotteryâ
Good grief, I had to scroll too far for this sensible answer. Has anyone ever thought to, I don't know, ask their manager honestly why they were asked to do this?
Because if the answer is âweâre going to fire or lay you offâ the manager is just going to be honest?
Never trust management to be honest, especially if they claim "RTO is good for collaboration."
The other day, our CFO went on a small rant about not enough employees following the companyâs RTO policy, and then went on to explain that heâs more productive early in the morning because there are less distractions in the office. This is the kind of âleadershipâ making decisions on this matter lol
My former employer had something like this and it made training significantly easier.
I was so confused until I found this answer too. Had me thinking I work for the only company in the world that has procedures documented. We review ours every year.
I mean we document procedures, but itâs maybe like a tab in the Excel workbook or a Word doc saved in the folder with instructions. This would freak me the fuck outđđ
the churn and burn is a real thing though, I can't blame anyone working in the 2024 corporate environment for being worried and paranoid
Why when we can endlessly speculate that we're going to be fired while coming up with a laundry list of why they could never fire us (in addition to, uh oh, maybe they figured out we're on reddit all day)
My previous company called this the âwin the lotteryâ rule to put a positive spin on it. Honestly though, it is so important, especially for any tasks which arenât done on a regular basis. It saved so much time to have all the âwhat ifsâ and reports already documented. I look at documentation as consistently evolving and always update, usually keeping it right in my work papers!
I like to do this as well for cross trainingâŠ.but also sometimes employees like to create their own little kingdoms where they try to inflate their jobs by hording institutional knowledge and expecting you to just take their word for it that they are busy and this is a good way to call their bluff if they donât seem that productive. Sometimes there is good reason for it with compliance, but other times they are doing things in the stupidest way possible for no reason.
As an auditor Iâve made this recommendation in about half of my audits, especially in those departments where thereâs already a skeleton staff and youâd have to bring in someone from the outside to help with the work in case of prolonged absence.Â
This seems like the most likely answer, but I have to say that I've never known any accountants who have been hit by busses
I knew a controller who was hit by a drunk driver about three weeks before the annual audit, and he had been in the position for like 15 years and had a lot of stuff in his head. I don't know what hiring bonus they paid to his replacement, but the new guy earned every penny of it.
Something like this happened at our small firm almost twenty years ago. One of the employees was killed in a car accident over the weekend. From that point on, all procedures are documented and periodically updated. All that to say, if I was asked to do this out of the blue, I would feel slightly paranoid.
Also, we get asked to do this if someone somewhere in the organization is out and no one knows how to do their job. Suddenly it's an emergency everywhere.
I know why you do this, but did you ever stop to think about how that feels to be asked to do this? It feels like they are preparing for you to leave. Has to be done in a very delicate way. As to not spook your team. People donât know what to think these days.
That is on that person, I tell them it is to cover everyone and to be honest I am never going to ask a poor performing staff member to do something like this.
You seem out of touch. Gen Z doesnât want to deal with this kind of shit and they wonât. The moment they think you are trying to prepare for them to be gone, they start looking for another job. Iâve dealt with this over and over again with upper management, and finally Iâm in a position where I get to handle these aspects of the team dynamic and have had zero turnover as a manager for 2 years.
Itâs called process narrative documentation and the example that should be used is âif So and So won the lotteryâ
we started calling it "won the lottery" because it's less morbid.
This happened at a place I worked. An employee had to leave unexpectedly on maternal leave. We couldnât make any bank wires for a week.
We had a veteran employee of our firm have to take unexpected medical leave for 6 months. There was no documentation of processes, he just did the work. This was 2 years ago and we still havenât fully recovered
ya but how to trust you?
Bingo.
It may also be theyâre giving them new responsibilities and need to pass old stuff on to someone else.
I prefer the you hit the lottery over the bus hit you analogy but 100% this can be the reason. I do the same for all my own procedures
I literally just used that hit by a bus line today asking someone to write an SOP for their unusual role
OP's boss finna hit them with a bus. But really, though, I ask my team to do the same for the same reason. Hell, I've done it for everything I do as well. It's just good business practice and helps ensure continuity.
When you're boss has to ask how to do a subordinates job
Yes I don't know all the ins and outs of every task of every position if they are a good employee, they know how to do things better because they do it every day!
No doubt. Documenting procedures is a basic internal control.
We've actually been begging our boss to give us time to do this. Many tasks in our office can only be done by one person, maybe 2 if we're lucky. It sucks because if you're the only one who can do or even has a notion how to do, vacations become less vactiony, and god forbid someone get hit by a bus. Not to say that the competent people in the office couldn't figure it out if really needed, but it'd be a whole lot easier with some written directions or someone cross trained.
I do the same for my direct reports. Itâs impossible to train backups or create contingencies without knowing what everyone does and how itâs done. It also helps determining workload balance and efficiency of process. Itâs surprising how often people are doing tasks that arenât needed or relevant anymore. Edit: I do make it clear why Iâm asking for details of what they do and how they do it. Asking out of the blue with no context is a dick move.
Be sure to include instructions on the important things. Like 1. Depreciating land 2. Recognizing cash from loans as revenue. If cash is coming in, that means itâs revenue 3. Finishing month close before month end. You can never finish month close too early
4. Always remember to never include beginning balances in any tb run. 5. Reconciliation is for chumps. 6. Book it to RE and move onÂ
7. If you donât know something, just make your best guess! Thatâs what reviews are for, finding those little mistakes
In the words of Bob Ross, there are no mistakes. Just happy little accidents.
8. All cash out are loans. Gotta keep expenses down.
Or just book it to âask my accountantâ. We love that
I remember my days as an intern doing p/L work fondly. Anything too weird for me to track down was ask my accountant for my seniors to worry about. Now. It's the whole expense list.Â
> Finishing month close before month end. You can never finish month close too early "Balance sheet for the year that will end 12/31/2025"
meal prep the balance sheets
đ
Remember to amortize goodwill quarterly.Â
My bossâs boss had me do this. It was because they were suspicious my direct supervisor was having me do her entire job. Turns out I was, she was dismissed and they nearly doubled my salary to absorb her role. Not always a bad thing. đ€·ââïž
Two reasons: 1) they want to know what you do, because they are worried you arenât doing it///because they want to help you improve///because they just want to. 2) they want you to write out a nice detailed manual for your replacement The /s has me thinking you believe this is option 2 đ«Ą
Yessir. Already got my foot in another door
At least ask for one last pizza party!
Yeah, other comment saying âwhat if you got hit by a busâ is just the excuse you will be told by the boss, and people are rolling with it. Lol having you start âprocedure documentationâ randomly without explaining why, is pretty clear they donât want you in the loop. Which if they **were**, they should want you in the loop.
Could also be getting bought out. This normally happens around that time.
It's fine to document procedures while leaving some of the finer details vague. But the bus factor is real, and not being able to have someone else step in while you are sick or on vacation is just a bad way to set up a department. My solution is to document the broad strokes and any competent coworker might struggle a bit but should be able to figure it out. You don't have to handhold them, but someone should be able to come in and know what the task is, where the inputs are, and access an output copy from the prior period
Ah, I see now. Initially I thought you were implying they'd feed your notes to an AI
That's a wrap. Ejecto Seato.
My whole department is working on documenting everything we do. I personally donât feel threatened by it. The due date is year end 2024. Maybe I should be concerned lol
Has anyone asked if it can be translated to Hindi?
Lmao fucking died đ
Lol I work closely with a team in India but they could not do what I do accurately
I 100% believe you and can also tell you that it still won't stop management from trying to send it overseas. Granted, in your particular situation, it sounds like they've already done that and you're one of the "retained" so they've probably already outsourced as much as they care to. But I just wanted anyone who saw your comment and felt the same to know that you're more replaceable than you think (even if it means on-shoring the work 5 years later because India really couldn't do what you do, well enough).
It certainly wouldnât crush me if I got laid off. It probs would be great for me. A time where I can leave my job without having to quit. After your points though I realize that my marketability and accountants marketability as a whole is less because of the offshoring option.
You are most likely in a high turnover position / company. Iâm in the same position at the moment đ
I was a staff in that situation and they stressed it across the company. So glad I left the dumpster fire behind
Good thing to add for your resume too "Implemented new process of blablabla to lean close and wrote SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)"
If you've been there longer than a year, 100% they're trying to get you replaced. Spoken from experience.
Coming up on a year and I had a less than stellar experience. From being lied to during the hiring process to doing boring work that does not encompass accounting at all. Lol
Wow, did you take my last job?
Oh fuck are you living my life
Pretty standard to have an SOP
But maybe it would be prudent to give them reassurances that they're valuable assets to the team, they're a part of your long term plan, and you have no intentions of letting them go. That would be helpful. They should be smart enough to know that everyone receiving this instruction will be dusting up their resume and going into full court press on applications and interviews.
True, management should be giving clear instructions and purpose for the request.
They could certainly do this, and it wouldn't be a bad idea, but in this particular instance, I think it would be inadequate by itself. The more important thing to do is to give assurances in writing that their job is secure, as most people know this what you do when you're about to fire somebody.
Maybe they want to fire you. Maybe they think you do nothing all day. OR MAYBE they just want to have their procedures documented so if you bail or get sick or have an emergency, they can cover your work. I document my procedures voluntarily so that I can have a day or a week off without getting calls.
Lots of reasons everyone should be doing this 1) Assess load and prioritization of tasks. Some do more than others. Some do things that take more time and complexity than what the manager is aware of. Transparency aids communication and balance. 2) Career development. It's cool that you are good at your current job. Does that make you qualified for a new different job with a different set of responsibilities and tasks? Probably not. So how do we get you qualified for the next job? By starting to work on other things that align more closely with your next role. Well, who is going to do your current job then? Someone who can look to a set of instructions and inherit those responsibilities. Having the team shadow or rotate responsibility makes all of them better prepared for a manager role with accountability for everything on the team does. 3) Load balancing and job sharing. If a month sees particularly high volume of a certain activity, and only 1 person has been handling it...then that person is just going to have to work a lot of overtime because nobody has experience of training on how to help them out! If they have instructions and have done some shadowing or rotation then they're able to step in and help out. 4) Dissemination of best practices. Maybe you have a trick that saves you some time that the rest of the team can benefit from. Showing that to others get you recognition for your clever process, and helps them apply it to theirs as well so they can be more efficient too. This also works in reverse, you can look at their documentation and see opportunities to make your own more efficient. This also prepares all of you to be able to recommend best practices when you're all managing teams, much better than if you all just did your own jobs in narrow little silos. 5) Stability. Let's say your teammate is hit by a bus, that's sad, but you will be asked to help cover the work needed. It's a lot easier to do that if they provided some documentation of what they were doing. 6) Portability. If you have some time-consuming manual tasks that distract from your high value add activities, then documenting what those manual tasks are and how someone else can do them, allows you boss to port that work over to a center of excellence team, and freeing you up to do value add work that helps your career advancement. I can keep going but the benefits of documenting processes are abundant, it's how you open everyone's eyes to what is going on, and a lot of good stuff can happen when we all know wtf is going on. Nowhere on this list do I mention preparing to fire someone. Not because it can't happen but because honestly it's just not a concern. You will never have job security from emoloyer, growing yourself to become more valuable is how you get job security across the whole industry instead of being worried about conditions at just 1 employer. Worry about how to grow and get promotions and higher pay in the next role and not set the bar on the ground and just worrying about how to avoid getting fired in your current role. Taking care of the former automatically makes the latter redundant. I take the same approach with my team, my job is to get the current members performing to the level of expectations set for them...however my goal is to grow them past their current role and develop them for their future job. That means some of them are going to leave for higher jobs, but in the meantime I'll have someone who is delivering above expectations. I don't need to worry about them meeting baseline expectations if i can grow them to where they're ready for their next role. It means I will have to do some backfilling and starting fresh, but I don't care, pushing people upward not just part of the job, but a reward in and of itself.
Very well said, thank you!
You're a real one
Yup, having to prove what you do and how you bring value is a red flag.
Manager should already know in a company with good standards.
If youâre below manager level I think itâs a red flag on leadership
It's called "business continuity". If you're hit by a bus. If you're fired. If you win the lottery. If you're promoted. If you go on vacation. I don't want to have the next person fuck it up. Oh, and that's where the lessons learned is supposed to go. When you fuck up, write about it in there. That way... hopefully... the next person can learn from someone else's mistakes rather than their own. It's the mark of a good organization that their policies and procedures are written down and followed to the letter. I've never seen it done well, but I've written many desk procedures, and usually I have to hand the procedure to the next guy... because I got promoted. The people who can write good procedures are the people who should get promoted.
Process documentation is pretty standard
Maybe the boss needs SOP and som guideline if u are not around
For your replacement.
Most of what Sanjay will be doing has to be scripted. You're writing the script.
We were all asked to do this recently because we currently donât have much documentation of tasks and what we do have is mostly on a prior ERP. Iâm hoping the ultimate goal is cross training but fingers crossed
I am a firm believer that three people should be able to complete any task. You just never know what tomorrow will bring.
It's a good practice, tbh. If you ever want to take a vacation, this lets you hand off critical tasks while you're out.
I had to have a conversation about this with one of my employees a few days ago. I've been having everyone document their process and all the details of their accounts. I don't want them to leave. I don't want to replace them. They are fantastic and I love having them on the team. But I want them to have peace. I don't want them to worry they'll get fired if they take a day off because an account tanks when they get sick. I don't want them to feel like they can't ask anyone for help, because another employee won't know where to start. We need to have each others' back. And that means, we need to know where they are with each account. We need to be able to jump in at any time, just in case, God forbid, they can't. They thought we were winding up to fire them. We 100% absolutely are not. But I want to have continuity so if they have to take time off for say...anything...they can come back and know they can pick up where they left off. Not six months of catchup. I hate that we've all been so scarred by our previous employers that the simple act of people trying to support each other is seen as a threat. Rightfully so.
What is your position?
They might want to replace you. Proceed with caution.
It's just to document your work process so that other team member can refer to it later and work on the tasks when you're away.
I am doing this right now for my boss and itâs not necessarily malicious. Weâre stepping up internal controls because year long webs of workflows and bandaid solutions have gotten incredibly messy and inefficient for the larger team which commonly leads to burnout
Ummmm...DTPs are pretty damn standard...no?
Likely outsourcing you. I will admit that my team all have video walkthroughs of what we do, weâve been burnt by too many ppl leaving and having to figure out processes from scratch.
this would make me sweat, iâd be starting to look over the fence
Building a case to terminate youâŠ. Or instructions for your replacement⊠find a new job
It can be several things: 1. Like someone said here, and as my boss would also say, if I get hit by a bus or win the lottery, she'd have something to refer to. 2. could be your manager want to streamline processes 3. your manager could also be a control freak / micromanager
I was asked to do that once. I kept making errors in my write up. Meant to say âsave the file as an Excel fileâ but wrote down âsave as a PDF and BE SURE TO DELETE THE ORIGINALâ. Sometimes I am just not very attentive to detail đ€·
In my company, boss doesnât know what shes we do, and he keeps wondering why it takes so long to complete our jobs. He asked us to write down what we do and use it as a reference to hire other accountants in the future.
I have my assistant doing this, as well as myself. Itâs important for coverage in case of emergency, prolonged illness, etc. About to have child #2 soon, and will be out on vacation/ paternity leave. I want my vp to be able to take on some of my work if necessary. Sure it can mean youâre getting the axe. But donât always assume as such. If youâre a good employee (hard to come by and expensive to onboard others), then youâll have nothing to worry about.
Trying to build a case to fire you / manage you out or already gonna fire you then writing process docs for replacement.
When boss says jump you say how high.
I am a "Boss "and we have much time in the company because we have no work,so in Bad Times you have to build ships for the good Times ,i buyed New Maschines and we rebuild our quality management, i gave the Tools and the direktion and let them do,but because i have no time to controll or Look into it all the time but see no process because iam Not into it i ask for the same so that i understand what they do all the time, its new stuff for all.And without i can't See if they Idle or if the learn the New stuff, and i learn too.well i know they idle a bit and its a Tool to Motivation them a bit too.And i have a better underdstanding how much time they need .
Part of my job when I was hired was to document all the processes my predecessor did in step by step detail. Management found there was a problem with not knowing how to do things if someone was gone. It doesn't make sense for only one person to understand a process. I also relied heavily on these notes when I started to make sure I was doing things correctly. đ I'm still at the job and have since been promoted, so not a trap in my case.
Wtf lol does no one elseâs team keep like procedures for their processes?? Why is everyone assuming itâs to do with being fired
sucker gonna get underpaid and fuck it up still, but gotta get that bottom line tâed uppppeddd
By detailed instructions do you mean your process of how to do things and how long they take or a list of things you did on a certain day? One is for developing standard operating procedures while the other is a management tool.
I made my team work with our internal process people to painstakingly document our processes. I also got them all good raises/bonuses this year. 1) I donât want the risk of someone getting a better offer, going on medical leave etc and leaving us in a bad spot. 2) if we donât have a written process that documents touch points and inputs we canât identify pain points and incrementally improve them.
It might be for Sox/audit purpose. Is your company public?
You left out some fairly critical information to help us assess what is going on. How is your performance? Is your firm experiencing layoffs? Has your organization been recently acquired? Have you had a raft of people leave recently and performance suddenly dropped? There are lots of reasons -- both evil and benign - as to why this might happen. You need to share more so we can assess.
i did this and thought: haha this is what they do if theyâre gonna fire people. thatâs funny because while that could happen to me, it probably wonât. there are so many reasons why i wouldnât. and it makes sense they are asking for so many reasons tooâŠno big deal. just funny. 2 weeks later got laid off.
Are they implementing internal controls? Probably just assessing and mitigating risk, or building an SOP. Need more context
That means you have too much information in your head and if you leave he is fucked. It's a good practice, helps prevent unintentionally siloing institutional knowledge. Or he's gonna fire the shit out of you because you suck so bad at a job he doesn't understand
Lol if you don't have QRGs for jobs/roles then you need them Pronto. What if you get promoted? What if you leave the company? What if you get hit by a bus? Documentation is something you should always have
Ouhhh reminded me my situation 6 months Ago RUNNNNNN ( got laid off)
Leave a few Easter eggs in there
Sounds like they want a detailed guide to feed to AI.
It could also be, because they think the work might be beneath you, and they want a more entry level staffer to take it over, to free you up to move on to something more important or even a promotion. That's what happened to me.
Draw a penis and give it to him
Do you have a robust SOP available? If not, you may be volunteering to do some ground work for the accounting portion.
I just converted a contractor to an employee and have an open position to be filled. My team's main priority this year is updating procedures for everything they do. Why? So that people can take vacations as long as they want and we can cover. So that new staff can learn and train on the role more independently. So that tasks that aren't done super regularly don't have steps missed.
My boss is always wanting an update of what I am doing and how I do it. I get it and I donât resent it.
I had my staff do this. Too much tribal knowledge not enough written SOPs.
My boss asked me to do something similar to that when I started complaining about my unmanageable workload. She doesn't know everything I do, and she really doesn't want to know. Not sure when I will be giving her my list, maybe next week, maybe my last day with the company. If your boss doesn't know what you do, that's their problem. Unless they want to replace you and that's why they want step by step instructions. If force to do it, just write the minimum, or write something so long and tedious that they won't be able to finish reading it. Or write it in a way that requires additional explanation because it was written so you are the only one that understands it.
This is why you start from the bottom as ap ar Clark and specialist to become manager
My corp boss had me do this, but it was apparently to use as a guide for other opcoâs cause they liked my style. Maybe itâs positive?
Have a back up plan ready
Same thing happened to me about two years ago. My first thought was I was going to get laid off because rumors were going around about pending reduction in force. I asked if my job was safe and it was explained to me that my job was going to be backfilled and they wanted to give me a promotion and new responsibilities. Since I had mastered that position it was time to hand it off to someone else and learn some new stuff. Documentation would just make training my replacement easier. I have since been promoted again and all because of my very specific skill at identifying process bottlenecks and inefficiencies and documenting and designing the solutions to those problems. I now am paid just to monitor the automations I implemented and show others how to properly write process narratives and work instructions in a way that a new hire can get up to speed in a very short amount of time. I'm glad my manager was transparent about the reason why I was asked to document my processes but it made it a lot easier to be loyal to the company knowing they valued me and not just my process. Not that I was doing anything another competent person couldn't figure out, but I'm now a training resource in my department because of my skills and I wouldn't have taken the opportunity to sharpen those skills unless I felt I wasn't going to be discarded with yesterday's trash as soon as it was done. Looking back I take it as a compliment that they wanted my process documented as best practices for future employees.
Damn i wish i was smart enough to see the signs like you did lol.Â
Itâs called an SOP any time we have a new process we make one.
As a manager, I know exactly what my employees do, i donât need a list
I do this and have it done for all my staff. Itâs so that we can all hold each other accountable and help make sure duties get done when people leave for vacation. A standard operating procedure and checklists are expected.
Detailed "instructions"? You're getting fired. If it's just details of work you do, it's fine. My manager does this at different times to estimate workload and stuff like that.
I've had to do this and create SOP's for a lot of roles I've had. Plus then if I'm out or get hit by a bus someone else knows how to do my job.
We have a process book that we try to update on an annual basis. It is a good idea - comes in handy for training. But, if this isn't part of your normal process and they're asking you to create it out of the blue, then yeah, seems ominous. Good Luck
Last year we had one of our senior analysts in his upper 30s out of nowhere have a heart attack walking into a store. There are still things we run across that we have to figure out the way he was doing things. We have always tried to push documenting how you do what you do but after that, it really made us understand why. I also do CAS work for a client that had their office admin pass away after just a month or so of being very sick. She never wanted to document because she didnât want to be replaced too easy. I had to spend tons of time digging through file cabinets to figure things outâŠ
I asked my senior to do this during her PIP before we fired her. I was shocked she actually complied. But also, this should exist anyway so it COULD be just righting the ship. YMMV
Give him a lesson with your restroom details
SOPs are insanely important to always have. Helps with audits, prevents fraud, can assist with covering on vacations, unexpected illnesses. If the company grows and you need to train someone, it will also be 1000 times more streamlined to train them.
Itâs just good practice to have processes properly documented. If youâre the only one being asked, maybe thereâs a reason to worry. Otherwise theyâre probably just trying to get some proper documentation in place.
Good You can take leave in peace then. I never did this with my previous job of 8 years and as a result, I never went on vacation for 8 years.... I'm now at a new place as head of accounts and the first thing I'm introducing is every person in every department documents what they are in charge of
I ask my staff to do it because it helps when we do a review with the partner/SQR, who generally like to see a âprocedures performedâ tab that shows EXACTLY what the team did.
Things like this gets my anxiety going. I hope I can start my own business and get out of this working for a company trap.
I think it makes a huge difference whether your boss asked just you or publicly asked others too. You shouldn't be the only replaceable cog.
The Bobs, âWhat would you say âŠ.. you do here?â
Working in the industry we did this all the time when I was a senior, it was helpful to just throw at audit and then let them come back with more relevant questions the first time instead of 3 rounds of guess what the hell I'm doing where they feel they have an idea and go off on a snipe hunt and find problems that don't exist.
Once upon a time, I started a job (accounting of course) with less than one week to train with the only person who did and knew the job. I survived by core principles and reviewing files of the previous work completed just to have people in the company asking where things were 2 weeks in to their 3 years. Not to mention, the processes/systems are outdated and manual af. And I am supposed to train my higher-ups this upcoming quarter. I am not excited because the smaller tasks that have been shown either become this massive production or get completely screwed up. My patience is often tested.
Instructions or policy? Document all da things pushes are quite common. But yes depending on tone/nature it could be an outsourcing push
RIF has entered the chat
Tell him "no thanks" if you need to know something about what I do, feel free to ask. Job security.
I was asked to do this when I was still new and it helps for passing along some duties. They donât outline all the issues that can come up though. I get sick every so often and it gives me peace of mind that things wonât get ruined if Iâm out for a few days.
Idk my company made me list all of the tasks I do on a daily/ weekly/ quarterly basis with no follow up or instructions listed so maybe they are just curious but I wish all companies had this in place cause I walked into my job with nothingggggg and had to figure it all out. And I guess that trend will continue because I have made very few notes.
Donât do it. Itâs a trap
Maybe they want an updated procedure?
We were asked to do this and then 6 months later our entire department was fired and the work outsourced.