Standards and training
Induction, brand, quality, method documents — the instruments that look harmless and are not.
Reads as a businessReads as employmentCuts both waysDepends where you are
Four factors, and no total. Every bar is the same length: the side is the claim, the size is not. Training is the instrument most often used without anybody noticing what it moves.
Standards You Can Require
A standard stated as a property of the output is a commercial requirement; taught and corrected it is a method, and most businesses reach for the latter.
Training Somebody You Did Not Hire
Teaching somebody your way of working makes their method yours, which is the heaviest factor nearly everywhere, and most of it happens without the word.
Induction, and What It Says
Running a contractor through the process designed for new employees is the commonest way a business tells itself and everybody else it has taken somebody on.
Wearing Your Name
Presenting a supplier to the outside world as part of your business is sometimes required by the work and always a statement, and the two look identical.
The Method Document
Written processes make work consistent, and handing one to a supplier converts a commercial specification into an instruction set without anybody saying a word.
Qualifications, and Who Checks
Requiring that somebody hold a qualification is an ordinary condition of engagement, and checking it is work that somebody in your business has to actually do.
The Team They Are Not On
Integration accumulates most quietly of all the factors, because every step towards it saves somebody real effort and none is a decision anybody records.