Prior to launching a Thailand branch, I had also been to Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia for market research.

Many of the managers I met said, “In Southeast Asia, people quit their jobs all of sudden. Even if they work normally, they suddenly disappear the next day.” On the contrary, if the staff have a long service period, their skills will become a black box so I cannot understand how they do it.”

I thought that creating work manuals for back-office staff before hiring them is urgent. 

When I was in Japan I wasn’t really interested in back-office related works.  I was completely working in the opposite environment so I didn’t know how it was going.

Back at the beginning of company establishment I was in the consulting business section.I was in a privileged working environment where I could just tell the president, “Please send me the bill for the next month.” I am the type of person who does not do much time management and expense claims. 

The month after the Thai corporation was established in August 2018, the first employee was welcomed on September 11. The first manual was created by our staff at 14:11:25 (from the date manual was created) on September 12th.

About contract management manuals. A lot of contracts were generated before and after the company was established, so probably this manual has been created based on my instruction of job description in order to manage the contracts being filed. It’s wonderfully fast for the employee to create a manual. It was the day after joining the company. I think that it is the fastest record among the companies that expanded into Thailand in terms of the speed with which the first employee created a manual.

After the employee created a manual, I will read it, but I don’t know if the procedures are correct or not, so I only grasp the workflow. Also, since the employee is not a veteran at back-office, I ask her to keep the created manual as a memo.

After that, including the contents pointed out by the staff of the advisory accounting firm during the work for closing at the end of the month.　This is the most important. Instead of making it just once, make a rough flow and make sure to add the contents advice from experts, superiors and acquaintances and update the manual. 

At that time, I had no idea what kind of manual I needed, so I asked the staff to make a manual of the daily new task.  Below shows the pace of manualization. I made a graph based on the list of the manual creation date.

Nine months later, in May, about 50 Thai branch’s in-house manuals (I remember that the number of  back-office related manuals was about 30 at this point) were completed. At this time, I made a management list. When I looked it up, I made it on June 9, 2019. Instead of listing the manuals that have just been completed, I ask the staff to add the tasks they worked for a month to the list separately from the manuals. It was a list of tasks that they completed.

After a month when the list is completed, we will match it with the existing manual. Then, there will be the tasks in the work list that are not linked to the manual. From next month, we will make a manual every time when tasks occur. By filling the list fully, you will have a complete set of manuals for the monthly routine work.

In addition, even when requesting non-routine tasks to the staff such as increasing capital, checking office in-out traffic, and applying for BOI, I will always ask the staff to make the manual of these tasks. At our company, work and the request (update) of manualization are a set.

By continuing this steady, we have 52 work manuals used by the back-office as of mid-March 2020. I have published a copy of the list below.The link attached to the listed tasks is the released sample manual. Please refer to it when establishing a company in Thailand. 

Click Here for viewing GA Working List

Next time, I will introduce how our back-office staff actually managed the handover process while WFH.

Teachme Biz - Visual SOP Management Platform that simplifies paper-based manuals, Work Instruction, Workflow or SOP into images and videos in step by step approach (Visual-based). You can create, edit and manage working procedure by all devices including mobile phone, tablet and PC. No more frustrating on unclear working instructions in your team. Staff-friendly manuals is far more effective and helps the user actually achieve a task.

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