Work Instruction and Job Aid Template

First decide how much detail the task needs. The UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) lists the factors to weigh. They include the significance of error, the complexity of the task, how often it is performed and the competence of the user¹. New starters, rare tasks and complex ones need every step written out. A trained person doing a frequent task may need only a card.

HSE adds that job aids reduce decision-making and the need to memorize key points¹, and that some companies print key information on small laminated cards.

Work from the written procedure, never from memory. If several versions circulate, first settle which one is in force: an SOP library gives each procedure one current document. If none exists, record someone doing the job and turn the walkthrough into an SOP.

Then count the stations. The same task on different equipment needs separate pages: a changeover at a hand-fill bench and one at an automatic filler are different sequences. Split by machine, position and who does it, never by shift. Cut each page in this order until it fits on one side.

1. 1

   Cut the reasons

   Explanations of why stay in the procedure.

2. 2

   Cut scope and definitions

   Who it covers and what terms mean stay there too.

3. 3

   Cut other people's steps

   Drop anything done away from this station.

4. 4

   Cut branches that never happen here

   Keep only the situations this station meets.

What's left is the sequence, the numbers and the conditions that stop the work. If that still won't fit, you have two instructions.

Start every step with a verb and give it one action. The European Commission's good manufacturing practice guide for medicines says SOPs and work instructions should be written in an imperative mandatory style². HSE's layout advice is to include only one action for each procedural step¹ and to put warnings before the step they apply to.

Keep the knack with its step. The Lean Enterprise Institute describes Training Within Industry, a set of World War II training programs that Toyota later adopted. Its Job Instruction trainers split each job into important steps, key points and reasons why³. On the page, a step and its key point (the detail that makes it work or keeps you safe) share a line.

Copy each figure from the procedure or manual, never from memory. HSE says not to refer readers to a table in a manual kept elsewhere for torque settings¹, and asks that quantities match what the controls and displays show.

Put a control block at the top of every copy. The EU guide says instruction documents should be uniquely identifiable², with a defined effective date. Six fields cover it: instruction ID, station, revision, parent procedure and its revision, issue date and verification date.

End with no more than three stop conditions, each naming something the person can see and who to call. "If the gauge reads above 0 bar after draining, stop and call the shift lead" is a stop condition. "Beware of residual pressure" is only a warning.

In US general industry, OSHA's lockout/tagout standard covers servicing and maintenance on machines whose unexpected start-up or release of stored energy could injure workers. Its procedures must set out steps for shutting down, isolating, blocking and securing⁴ the equipment, placing and removing locks or tags, and testing that the isolation worked. OSHA says compliance prevents an estimated 120 fatalities and 50,000 injuries each year⁵.

A new page is a draft until someone has watched it in use. HSE says procedure users should always help write procedures, and suggests talking through the written procedure at the place of work¹.

Then verify it. Someone who doesn't use the instruction watches an operator follow it, checks each figure against the machine plate and asks what the page gets wrong. OSHA requires this independence for lockout procedures: the inspection, due at least once a year, must be done by an authorized employee other than the ones using the procedure⁴.

A revision is done only when every old copy is gone. Log each physical copy: where it hangs and the revision printed on it. HSE's checklist for managing procedures includes a formal mechanism for removal of all out-of-date procedures¹.

When the parent procedure changes, review every instruction cut from it. Many will be unaffected or need only rewording. Where the work itself changes, pull old copies before new ones go up, and retrain people before they start. OSHA's lockout standard requires retraining whenever there is a change in the energy control procedures⁴.

Log each person's retraining in a training compliance tracker, and send a process change announcement naming the day the old way stops. Hang paper, not laminate, while a procedure is mid-revision.

For a faster start, open this template with Edit with AI. River cuts your procedure into one page per station and logs every copy you tell it about.