Jeremy Tauri: A little list can save you a lot of hassle

You should use lists in your business.

Shopping lists, Christmas lists, camping lists and to-do lists. Most people rely on some kind of list to help them keep track of the things they have to do.

How well do you use lists in your business?

A standard checklist used by everyone across the business is a good way to ensure consistency on every job.

Sure, many of the things you put on the list may seem so obvious as to be common sense but you never know when a busy day is going to mean you or one of your staff need a reminder.

This also means the processes that you do are put on to paper so if you can't be on a job on a particular day, it still happens as it should.

It is interesting that checklists for surgery were formally introduced only in this century as part of a World Health Organisation initiative which was designed to reduce the risk of complications in the first 30 days after surgery.

A study took place in eight hospitals in eight cities worldwide of differing economic backdrops that concluded that the rates of death reduced from 1.5 per cent to 0.8 per cent, with complications reducing from a baseline of 11.0 per cent to 7.0 per cent after the implementation of the checklist.

So, checklists can make a difference. But where do you start to look to implement a checklist for your business?

Completing job processes: This is the most obvious and easy choice -- If you have job processes then you can implement checklists for them.

Quality control: Ensuring there's a consistent standard of service of product also means having systems to review work. This doesn't necessarily mean you as a business owner have to check all the work but a checklist to review the end result can help ensure work is up to your standard.

Delegation and time management: This is where a checklist is most useful as it allows you to allow others to complete or prepare for tasks, while you step back and look to refine tasks and processes.

On the web there are loads of free tools to create some basic checklists. If you have used Adobe PDF before then downloading a free trial of the form creators allows you to easily create some clever lists that work on mobile software as well.

Are there processes that you can checklist in your business?

Jeremy Tauri is an associate at Plus Chartered Accountants.