Full form of SOP

Full form of SOP is Standard Operating Procedure.

SOP is a step by step process or set of instructions which followed by companies to ensure that the employees and workers can easily carry out the routine operations which are complex in nature.

SOP may be of different types from any organizations to organizations on the basis of nature of business which try to achieve regularity in employees’ performance and quality output as well as the efficiency.

For example, the hotels, banks and hospitals may slightly have different SOPs. It may be consistent in different official functions such as accounting, sales, marketing, customer service, etc

It reduces the chance of mis-communication and workers can fully follow the industry rules and regulations.

In smaller organizations, the CEO makes all the decisions related to day to day business activities. But as the organization expands, SOPs are needed to bring stability in business operations. It acts as a reference guide for the employees, which helps them to understand easily the order of business practices and other routine tasks.

In some companies, SOPs are need to be followed strictly. For example different fields and are some of the critical fields where there is no scope for errors like, Pharmaceuticals, Clinical Research, Emergency Response, Power Plants.

Types of SOP

Generally, programmatic/administrative SOPs contain five different elements:

Purpose, Procedures, page, Table of Contents, Quality Assurance/Quality Control, and References.