Lab documentation is an often-overlooked asset in the lab. Too many labs view it as a necessary evil—an overhead activity that is required by regulators and auditors to meet compliance requirements. But it can also be a strategic tool that demonstrates what is important and how decisions are made. High-performing labs don’t just collect documentation; they create what they need to improve the underlying systems on which the lab operates.
Documentation priorities for labs
Successful lab managers make intentional decisions around the "what,” "how," and “why” of documentation in their labs. These internal priority decisions are linked to the core values of the lab. By clearly documenting processes, workflows, methods, procedures, and policies, lab managers send clear messages to staff about what is important, what needs to be done consistently, and where the lab will spend overhead time to improve its systems. The documentation reflects the lab’s priorities.
The lab documentation also serves to preserve the important organizational knowledge of the lab. It makes information available to teammates when the key owner is unavailable or otherwise occupied. It also ensures that if something goes wrong, there are documented standards available to reference for whoever needs to address the problem.
Consistency and reliability
One of the key benefits of effective documentation is to improve consistency and reliability across the lab’s most important processes and workflows. Building documents that staff contribute to, use, and share helps reinforce the expected and proven ways to execute different lab activities. Standardizing important processes reduces variability, produces more predictable outcomes, reduces the heroics of human excellence, and helps to train and scale new activities. Lab managers can emphasize documentation when consistency is key and allow other areas more flexibility where innovation and creativity are most important.
Documentation for the user
The best documentation is designed for the lab staff who need to use it as part of their roles. It’s not dry, official documents designed for auditors or inspectors. These documents are built by and for the lab staff to help them perform at a higher level. The goal of these documents is to record what is actually done in the lab to produce high-quality results and minimize the gap between what the lab says it does and what it actually does.
Some things that lab managers can do to produce more effective documentation include:
- Be practical – include the information staff need
- Avoid complexity – keep the messages simple and useful
- Emphasize clarity – use a straightforward structure, tone, and style that helps staff do better work
- Accessible – ensure the documents are easy to access and readily available
Enable learning and improvement
Documentation is created or amended to include updates, lessons, learnings, deviations, and investigations. These are living documents that are maintained and kept up to date. It is an important segment of the feedback loop, not a dusty artifact. Active documentation captures errors, mistakes, and lessons and creates organizational learning, so that everyone benefits from each experience.
Shared responsibility
When documentation is viewed as important, valuable, and strategic, everyone can participate in creating, reviewing, and updating it. Documentation is no longer perceived as blame, surveillance, or unnecessary bureaucracy. Smart leaders position documentation as part of the lab’s support system, not just a compliance trap.
Lab managers can lead this approach to documentation by modeling good documentation habits, clearly explaining why documentation is important, and involving the people with the right experience to create, review, and use the documents. One good practice is to have new staff who are learning new activities create the first drafts of needed documents. They can capture what experienced staff are doing, bring a new perspective to the activity, and don’t have any bad habits to propagate. The documents can then be reviewed by experienced staff and lab leadership for completeness and accuracy.
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Investing in documentation
Nothing in the lab happens for free. Lab managers must invest staff time in building effective documentation. Doing so signals that documentation matters. It also shifts effort toward productive upfront work instead of rework, investigations, errors, and confusion that occur when staff rely on habit or memory rather than clear, high-quality guidance.
A strategic asset
Effective documentation is a strategic asset that represents management quality. It provides explicit reference to what is important, valuable, and expected around the lab. High-performing labs don’t rely on memory, habit, luck, or the heroics of human excellence. They build robust systems to enable the lab staff to perform at a high level consistently and predictably.
