Copy and Paste Systems: Turning your compliance checklist into a staff manual

Many tourism owners are completely overwhelmed by the idea of writing standard operating procedures or staff handbooks from scratch. In this episode, Samantha Smits shares an ultimate operational shortcut: your sustainability certification checklist (like Travelife) is actually a ready-made blueprint for your internal business workflows. Samantha explains how to translate vague, technical audit language into concrete, unmissable daily action steps for your team. Learn how to map criteria for waste, water, and procurement into a unified digital manual that prevents high-season 'short circuits,' builds team autonomy, and keeps your business running smoothly while you are completely offline.

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Transcript

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In any case, creating such a staff handbook, including all these specific steps, will ensure that every new staff member or even the longer ones who are forgetting something will follow the exact same logic. Hi, I'm Samantha Smith and welcome back to the Sustainability Edge, the tourism podcast. No yargon, no fluff. We're breaking down sustainability and especially how to turn sustainability in a practical tool that gives you more profit, more time, stuff that's staying in a business you can be proud of. Let's get started. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. And what I want to talk about today is one of the most common frustrations I hear from operators and accommodations like you, or in business in general. I can even experience this myself. You are trapped in the daily grind, your team is relying on you for every single operational decision. So you're looking to build a handbook to write out what they call an SOP, a standard operating procedure, but finding the time and you're so overwhelmed to sit down and type out a system because how have you been doing something in your business and how do you want someone else to do this? I even experienced this myself with my VA that I'm a virtual assistant, that I'm trying to write out a process for her so I can delegate more and more. But today, for you specifically as a toolator or an accommodation provider, I want to talk about an operational shortcut on how to build such a system for yourself or how to write such a handbook for yourself. And it really can become, well, not quite literally a copy paste, but we're going to use a sustainability checklist or certification that you're using to do this. Because if you look at a credible sustainability certification framework such as Travel Life, Fair Trade, Tourism, GCC, Greenkey, there's so many. They will all ask you very specific operational questions. Do you have a waste sorting policy? How is the food waste tracks? How do you onboard local staff? How you measure water? Or what uh what uh how do you do your marketing? What do you communicate to your suppliers? What do you communicate to your guests? There's a lot, a lot specified in there that's just difficult to ask from you. So if you think about it, the authors of these frameworks, so the certification bodies, have already done quite all of the lifting for you in creating a handbook for your business and your team members how to run it. So they actually already have given you the exact things that you should consider or the separate systems that you want to communicate to your cli not to your clients, but to your staff members. A very specific example here with a specific certificate. I work often with Travel Life for Two operators, and chapter three within TraffLife for two operators is the biggest chapter. It is fully focused on procurement, purchasing decisions, so how you make your decisions for any product from the tea you have, from the cleaning material, but also the resources from the water to the fuel to the energy, all of it. That entire chapter is asking you for a lot of small policy. What is your policy to reduce your energy use? What is your policy to reduce your waste? What is your policy to reduce your water? So policy here, policy there, and that could become a lot of different small separate papers that are scattered all over your business, and not a lot of it is done with it. But I heard a colleague coach of mine some months ago that she's suggesting her companies to actually create a handbook, a staff handbook that would cover chapter three, which is focus on procurement, rather than having one paper for energy, one paper for water, one paper for waste, one paper for uh mobility. You have like a paper for everything and it becomes super disorganized. And to just bundle it together into one staff handbook and give it to every staff member when they are onboarded, source they can consult the entire time during their employment review, which brings everyone on the same page, sustainability-wise, but also business-wise, because you can include your other business processes into this as well. And I found that a super interesting solution and suggestion, and that's how I'm now linking this to so much an entire sustainability scheme that quite some of you are slowly having to follow anyway, because of the new regulations that just gives you a framework of how to give your supplier give your European agents the data that they request you. If they already give you the framework, if they already give you the steps, it makes so much sense to bundle it into such a stuff handbook and that way have everyone on board at the same time. And here I speak from my own experience, even though I'm probably on a smaller scale working than you are. I'm not a tool parator, not an accommodation, I consult you guys. But for me too, it used to be mainly a one-man show, and now for over a year I have a virtual assistant, and also for me, more and more I am trying to write out processes, even though I've done it alone for so long, or didn't even realize that I had processes behind certain tasks in my business. I have to identify her more and more, actually recognize the system behind something to be able to write it out, or I record a loom for her or some other instructions, so that she actually can take things over so that I free up more of my time for profitable tasks. Because that's also uh entrepreneuring speech, right? That as founder, as CEO of your business, you need more time for the profitable tasks. So you have to be able to delegate the rest. And hence such a handbook will work wonders. And if your sustainability scheme for certification already is giving you the structure, is already giving you templates, why not make use of that? It's going to save you so much time. And an objection I can also hear, oh, why the need to write down everything? I know perfectly how everything works, it's in my mind, and my staff also perfectly knows what to do, why would I still write it out? And then this is the same argument as we see basically with creating data and creating evidence for these certifications for sustainability, that you're just hoping that based on trust and on feeling that things will magically work out. But if nothing is documented, nothing can be proven, or in this case, nothing can be taught to the people that really don't know. So, yes, even if things have been going well so far, mistakes are just around the corner. There really is a need to document and to write everything down, and then of course we talk about sustainability, not necessarily on physical paper. This can perfectly be done digital as well. But it will just, even if you feel for now, everyone knows this, why am I doing this? You're going to thank yourself later because even for you, you don't have to explain yourself over and over again when someone new gets goes on board. It may it saves a lot of time. And also, especially as founder CEO, when you are on a holiday or when you have less availability, you don't want to be called for something that they should know but have forgotten, right? Both sustainability and general business. For me, for example, I think I recorded several videos on new tasks for my virtual assistant because at the point of recording this podcast, I think for like about how one and a half months I had been working just part-time because I was in the Netherlands with my partner, so I want to spend more time with him during his holiday. And as soon as I came back to Tanzania, I was hosting my first friend at this time of recording the podcast, and I wanted to have more time with her to show her around. So, of course, to keep the business going, because I'm only a few years in, I still worked for like half, but at the same time, I worked at a reduced rate, and some tasks have to continue. So for me it was so practical that I did record, in my case, I've recorded Loom videos because I just have one VA. But if you are a tool operator, if you are an accommodation and you work at a bigger skill, you have many you have freelancers, you have staff and all of them, then such a handbook makes a lot of sense. And then such a sustainability scheme brings you all the steps that you could include easily, or you could even bundle all the different templates in one bigger handbook. But of course, I mean there are templates available, or you could even take the literal criteria. There still is a need to translate the technical language that's being used by sustainability certification schemes into daily action steps, because that is the issue with something living in your mind or something being written by someone else. How do you make it understandable by the person who actually has to execute the task? How do you make it more concrete, more broken down for them? So if a scheme would ask for specific methodology, which is a very fancy way of saying the way of how you work or the way how you approach something, then this manual of yours would have to outline the exact step that every Friday, this time, you have to read this meter, or every Tuesday you you go into this folder and this is what you do. You have to break it as literally down until that level for someone else to understand it technically. Making something this much specific will remove a lot of guessing work and actually being so specific is also really required by certifications in sustainable tourism because this is the whole issue that we've discussed in previous episodes, right? Even with greenwashing, that people are in general too vague, whether on purpose or by accident. But we have to stop being vague and start being more specific. And this break down, this is exactly on the dot, what is expected. So rather than saying I want you every Friday to run through the numbers and let me know what's up, you really write down every Friday, I need to know the amount of fuel that was being used, what amount of vehicles, and how much it has increased compared to the last month, and also for water, how much water did we use per guest per night or per staff per working day? You have to get this as specific as possible so that they can by routine follow the step by step. And actually this way, they also exactly produce the data that then is useful for you to apply to such a sustainability scheme. So it just is wins all around. And by being as specific as possible and removing all this guessing work, what room for questions are left? At that point you will really receive good questions, good the ones that are not that you feel like you should know this, because everything is written out, only the good ones will come up that you haven't thought about that you want to add to the manual, and then as you build onto that manual, at some point there is there should be no space anymore, or there is just nothing to be asked anymore because everything is written down. So linking this all to sustainability in general, as I've said several times, the verb in English to sustain is to make something last for longer, which is also why sustainability and business do go hand in hand, because especially in tourism, we're looking at how to have the community, yeah, that they keep lasting, of course, that is uh obviously something we want to wish. The destination has to keep lasting, but also your business has to keep lasting. So here, if you like me, are going to work part-time for a long time, or you're going on leave, or you have a week off or whatever, and you are at some point completely online or unavailable, you don't want that something's collapsed behind your back just because someone couldn't ask you a question. So, anyhow, if you just do it for your business in general, if you do it for sustainability, if you do it for your own peace of mind, if you do it to apply for a sustainability certification, in any case, creating such a staff handbook, including all these specific steps, will ensure that every new staff member or even the longer ones who are forgetting something will follow the exact same logic. Such a handbook in this case is becoming an ultimate structural shortcut for organizing your business. It really forces you to map out your all your workflows, which is also very good feedback for yourself, which is the same that I often hear people saying about going through such a sustainability certification in general, that becomes some kind of business feedback, and then in a good way that it will only make you feel better and better. So here, when we're combining criteria that such certifications already have, together with making your business more organized and structured and having everyone on the same line. So here, if your criteria become your daily habits, you are actually also having less issue with all these requests from whether it's your your European partners or from these sustainability schemes. It will give you less administrative headache and it actually gives you a framework to how to structure your business. So here I really recommend do not wait for a quiet month to sit down and write these procedures from scratch because any time is better than later, and you can especially test them in high seasons when people will you will get so many calls and especially the ones that you feel like, but you've known this forever. It's like your fifth year with me. But still, cra high season does crazy things with people and people get shortcuts in the mind, like short circuits, they have to. So if you already are with a certification, open it up, see what you can use to build such a handbook yourself, or start pursuing one, or actually, if at the moment you're doing none of those, but I've now triggered some curiosity in you, or you have some questions, or you have some feedback for me, I highly encourage you to reach out to me. Get down into the show notes so you can find there my website to book a discovery call with me. You can also find me on LinkedIn, let me know your thoughts, let me know your feedback, let me know your next steps. I'm very excited to hear them. And yeah, see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening and congratulations on investing your time today to think strategically about your future, to make sure you never miss a step to understand sustainability better, how to grow your competitive edge. Follow the podcast right now, and if this was helpful, please leave a five star rating. It will help other people like you to find these tools. I'm Samantha Smith, and I'll see you in the next episode.