Check out last week’s entry, which covered marketing templates, here.
When you take a role in operations, you do so knowing that very few people at your company will really understand what you do all day, let alone how hard it is or why it matters. Keeping the lights on — and the desks filled — is the sort of often-thankless job that relies on a careful balance of efficiently executing on the repeatable processes you’ve developed to fit the unique needs of your business and being ready to adapt at a moment’s notice to whatever hyper-specific problem inevitably arises. Faced with the dizzying array of competing organizational priorities, non-negotiable government regulations, and the individual whims of colleagues in every part of the business, it’s helpful to have somewhere to start.
Here at Airtable, we’ve been in your shoes — and we’ve helped countless other HR and operations professionals build the systems they need to keep things running smoothly no matter what stage their company might be in, from the first inklings of an idea to post-IPO global scale. Below, we’ve collected some of our favorite templates for keeping the chaos at bay.
Startup Incorporation Checklist
If you’re a founder that’s just getting your feet wet in the world of startups, there’s a whole lot more to get done in the first few weeks than coming up with a great idea. Once you’ve got a winner and you’re ready to make it official (legally, at least), there’s paperwork to fill out and processes to follow before you can start searching for product-market fit.
Airtable founder Howie Liu compiled a comprehensive Startup Legal Guide that captures helpful resources for every single step along the road to incorporation. Although many of the details are specific to the state of California, and to the city of San Francisco in particular, the process is similar for most metropolitan areas, and you can quickly adapt the checklist to fit the requirements for your region.
Recruiting
No matter the size or goals of your company, there’s little more consistently and universally time-consuming than recruiting. Startups and small businesses that don’t want to go with a traditional Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can quickly spin up a system that’s unique to their recruiting needs based on one of our recruiting templates:
Recruiting through Craigslist? Learn how we automated much of the process:
Onboarding
Once you’ve found the perfect future employee and have a signed offer in hand, there’s still the small problem of getting them set up for success. Prior to day one, there’s system access to grant, paperwork to collect, furniture and office space to allocate, and much more. Consider the importance of introducing your newbie to the company culture, and the todo list grows even longer. Our employee onboarding template below will help you organize the entire onboarding process so that your new hire is ready to go on day one.
Employee Directory
Keeping a centralized directory of the names, titles, photos, and contact information for every single employee helps to save everyone a little time getting oriented — and can prove a game-changer in emergency situations. The employee directory template below, which features an Airtable gallery view of employee portraits and a quick-entry form for new employees, can be customized to capture just about any information you might want to know.
Office Inventory
Offices run on snacks and paper goods. That is to say, any good office manager knows the easiest way to avoid a rebellion is to keep the fridge stocked at all times. Throw in higher value, lower turnover items like furniture and electronics, and you’ve got a potential organizational mess on your hands.
The office inventory template below captures both the process for tracking and replenishing consumable goods, and the allocation and inventory system for assets like desks, computers, and more.
Vendor CRM
No office is run by a single operations person — or team — alone. There’s a small army of vendors ready to help with everything from janitorial services to keeping the snacks filled and taxes filed. Here’s a simple template to track contact information, contracts and more, all in one place.
Contractor Management
Despite your skillful expertise in multi-tasking and time management, there are times when you won’t be able to tackle everything on your own, and you’ll need external help to get the job done. You can use our template below to manage all of your contracting work— from keeping track of all your contracted projects to making sure you’ve paid contractors for their services.