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18 Project profile Fruit and vegetables: a winning entry ‘What on earth do you do in a supermarket?’ Pam Nicholl describes her work as a technical communicator in a retail environment. ‘…a new manager is far better equipped to maintain consistency if all our policies and procedures are clearly expressed in writing…’ As an integral part of our drive for continuous improvement, the <strong>ISTC</strong>’s 2005 Documentation Awards became the Branch Operating Procedures (BOP) team’s project for last year. For me, it presented a time to reflect that my career development in Waitrose has really been one long project in itself. It has been challenging, very hard work, lively, innovative and vibrant. There is always a new challenge, always the need to identify, improve, simplify, satisfy and move on. The beginning I joined Waitrose as a Management Trainee with the intention of working my way up to branch management. The business was well organised and branch systems and processes worked smoothly, but very little was written down, apart from the financial and stock management elements of the operation. At that time, we were no different from any other retailer in this respect. However, more managers were being recruited as graduate trainees or from other industries and competition among supermarkets was, and still is, fierce. It seems evident that, in a company where standards are of paramount importance, a new manager is far better equipped to maintain consistency if all our policies and procedures are clearly expressed in writing and that they should be available for all branch Partners to refer to, rather than management alone. These observations must have been well timed. A year into my first branch appointment I was asked how I would like to move to head Pam Nicholl with Mark Andre, Department Manager Merchandise at Wokingham office for 12 months to ‘bring the procedures up to date’. This seemed an exciting challenge well worth taking up. A time of change I achieved my one-year deadline, but along the way I discovered I was on a mission. At our head office in Bracknell, department structures were changing. As branches increased in number, it was no longer practical to have regular visits from subject experts who contributed to the education process. It was going to become increasingly important to have all the elements of operational procedure clearly formulated to deliver change and evaluate its impact as we moved into the future. It was also becoming clear that technical advances in our operating systems would raise the need for user guides and that, as legislation placed more demands on food retail, records and documentary evidence would need to become part of the daily routine. In fact, enforcement officers would soon be insisting on it. As is very likely the case in most companies, it was not always easy at first to convince colleagues of a need that had not yet strictly arisen. The long-term project Thus, my long-term project began as Procedures Coordinator. This was quite a good description of the role at the time and consisted of getting to know department heads, understand their roles and interaction with our branches, and then move on to identify which further aspects of the branch operation needed to be documented and to what level of detail. Having no background in this field but being a logical thinker and lapsed translator, I decided to begin by attending a two-day course on policy and procedures. This gave me a good, clear picture of where I felt we should be. I started identifying those components of the branch operation that were not documented or were poorly understood, and worked out a new structure to demonstrate how it could work. After establishing contact with the various subject experts at head office, I visited a number of branch managers to identify what might help them to do their job better. Some highlighted the need for more detailed procedures and some quite the opposite. It was interesting to discover what was custom and practice and what was actual company policy. As a relative newcomer, I was able to ask without embarrassment any question that came to mind because there was no expectation that Communicator Spring 2006
19 I should know any of the answers. This is the first thing I now point out to new team members when easing them into their role. During my investigation process I learned a great deal about the business. Waitrose was making major commercial strides at this time and the value of the policy, procedures and records structure began to prove itself as a sound commercial tool. At the beginning, it was interesting to see how the sight of our own ideas in draft quite often triggered still better ideas, highlighted inconsistencies between one process and another and brought people together in the decisionmaking process. The circulation of draft work also saved a lot of unnecessary meetings! Language From the outset I took the opportunity to change the style of the language. It had to be read and quickly grasped. It could be read by anyone: shop floor Partner needing information urgently, director, enforcement officer. This called for plain English in an unpatronising style. It was sometimes a challenge and I well remember that the path leading from ‘in the event that blah blah, branch mangers must ensure that blah blah.’ to the simple ‘when so and so happens, do this’ was winding and sometimes tortuous. Nevertheless, I achieved it by gentle persuasion, some persistence and occasional bulldozing. At the bulldozing stage, I was fairly firmly established as editor and usually writer of what had now become the Branch Operating Procedures. Interestingly, I find even now that material I wrote only a couple of years ago can be simplified in its language. Such is the pace of evolution. Software Software was at first a challenge. The inherited procedures had been word processed and filed in brown plastic-coated volumes. They certainly did not shout ‘read me’. I wanted to make them more readable, and so I did some research on how people absorb the written word, line length and margins, and set out to look for some software that would enable me to index more flexibly. For example, I wanted the user to find how to dispose of their food waste correctly whether they searched ‘rubbish’, ‘refuse’, ‘compactor’, or even by the contractor’s name. I settled on FrameMaker, which I tracked down at an event in London, and rushed back to the office elated because it seemed to do exactly what I needed it to do. I constructed procedures and user guide templates that served me well for several years. The BOP team’s work The role developed more or less as I had hoped and, as the procedures proved their usefulness, a small team began to develop. Now we are the BOP team, involved in almost every new project that affects the branch operation. Each member has responsibility for an area of expertise. Overlaps in role are maximised to the point where a second person has enough understanding to provide support in an emergency. We have managed to maintain and improve our standards year on year by keeping pace with technology but above all by listening to our ‘customers’. These are Waitrose Partners at head office and in over 170 branches who come from all walks of life and every level of education. We are all pieces of the jigsaw and we aim to make every piece a perfect fit. Systems and processes Several members have asked what on earth I do in a supermarket, so you would not be the first to do so. But think how your shopping reaches your trolley. There are numerous systems (ordering, distribution, ticketing, scanning, electronic communication) and, more recently, many developing handset applications that enable us to track our stock, check that our price tickets match the price at the checkout, reduce stock to clear, amend our orders and obtain sales and wastage information. We produce user guides for all these in collaboration with our training department and technical teams. We often help with system design, using our knowledge of current systems and processes combined with what we know we need to keep life simple, improve productivity and provide us with the necessary information. Due diligence I mentioned the need for records to provide documentary evidence. Legislation makes a significant impact on the food retail industry. Imagine a counter full of sumptuous delicatessen and cheeses. For me, this represents strict open food handling procedures, refrigeration temperature monitoring, hot and cold product probing, cold chain from supplier to checkout, cleaning rotas, separation between cooked and raw food and various kinds of date coding. For me, this means policies, procedures, schedules, records and internal and external audits with all they entail. It’s my role as Manager of the BOP team to be responsible for the whole due diligence package, ‘…as legislation placed more demands on food retail, records and documentary evidence would need to become part of the daily routine.’ Communicator Spring 2006
Page 1 and 2: Communicator The Institute of Scien
Page 3 and 4: Contents Communicator The quarterly
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Page 7 and 8: ISTC Books: the next step Council i
Page 9 and 10: Member news New members Member Simo
Page 11 and 12: Methods Moving to structured author
Page 13 and 14: 13 to command higher salaries than
Page 15 and 16: Try our one-click RoboHelp ® Proje
Page 17: 17 organisation will be more intere
Page 21 and 22: Writing for global markets? Bring t
Page 23 and 24: 23 Table 1. Impact of WAI guideline
Page 25 and 26: 25 to measure that quality. It is t
Page 27 and 28: provides the opportunity to reuse,
Page 29 and 30: 29 be portrait; landscape may be us
Page 31 and 32: 31 server than simply displaying pa
Page 33 and 34: Tools LaTeX: an introduction LaTeX
Page 35 and 36: 35 when to show warnings related to
Page 37 and 38: Tools Taking FrameMaker a little fu
Page 39 and 40: 39 Figure 5. Using variables to con
Page 41 and 42: Industry news 41 Coventry, developi
Page 43 and 44: 43 announced that CNH’s ASIST sys
Page 45 and 46: Editing What does a copyeditor do?
Page 47 and 48: Illustration Back to basics The ITE
Page 49 and 50: Translation Localisation, localisat
Page 52: 50 Member profile In this issue, we

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