Why Do Employees Keep Working Around the Process?
What looks like an accountability problem may be evidence that the work is harder to execute than it should be
Most organizations have at least one process employees rarely follow exactly as designed.
They keep a separate spreadsheet because they don’t trust the official report. They send messages outside the normal workflow because requests may sit untouched. They create their own checklist because the written instructions leave out the steps people actually need.
When leaders discover these workarounds, it is reasonable to question why employees are not following the approved process. Before treating the workaround as an accountability problem, though, leaders need to understand what it is helping employees accomplish.
The workaround may be solving a real problem
Employees rarely add extra steps to their work without a reason.
Consider a team that keeps a second spreadsheet because the official report only updates overnight. Managers need current information throughout the day, so employees rebuild part of the report manually.
Leadership sees duplicate tracking. Employees see the only reliable way to answer customer questions accurately.
The workaround may be inefficient, inconsistent, or risky. It may still be solving a legitimate problem that the formal process has left unresolved.
That leads to a better leadership question:
What problem is this workaround solving that the official process does not?
That question does not excuse employees from following reasonable procedures. It helps leaders determine whether the procedure is actually reasonable, reliable, and usable.
Removing the workaround does not remove the need
Suppose a leader discovers that employees are maintaining an unofficial spreadsheet and tells them to stop.
The spreadsheet disappears, but the delayed report, missing information, or broken handoff that caused employees to create it remains.
Now the organization has removed the visible evidence without correcting the condition underneath it. Employees are still expected to produce the same result, only without the method they created to make the work possible.
That is not process improvement. It is symptom removal.
Before eliminating a workaround, leaders need to know what will stop working when it disappears.
Capable employees can hide weak processes
The employees who create workarounds are often some of the most capable people in the organization.
They know which report needs to be checked twice. They recognize when the system has produced the wrong answer. They know who to contact when a request gets stuck and how to move the work forward without creating a larger problem.
Their resourcefulness keeps the operation moving. It can also hide how fragile the operation has become.
As long as experienced employees continue catching errors, filling gaps, and correcting weak handoffs, leaders may believe the process is working. The result is being produced, even though employees are spending unnecessary time and effort to produce it.
Then one of those employees changes roles, takes leave, or leaves the organization.
The organization does not just lose a person. It loses part of an operating system that was never formally built.
What happens when employees can no longer compensate?
Southwest Airlines experienced the scale of this risk during its December 2022 operational disruption.
Severe winter weather disrupted the airline’s flight schedule. Southwest later reported that it struggled to realign crews, aircraft, and flight schedules during the peak holiday travel period.
The disruption exposed more than a weather problem. Southwest acknowledged that it revealed a functional gap in its Crew Optimization software and subsequently upgraded its crew-reassignment software and strengthened the communication and operational tools used during disruptions.
The consequences were significant. The U.S. Department of Transportation reported that approximately 16,900 flights were cancelled and more than two million passengers were stranded during the holiday disruption.
Southwest is an unusually large example, but the underlying lesson applies to much smaller organizations.
A process may appear reliable while employees are supplying the judgment, communication, memory, and manual effort that the system lacks. When the volume or complexity of the work exceeds their ability to compensate, the weakness can become visible very quickly.
Tool Support is more than technology
Within the JL³ Performance Levers, Tool Support describes the systems, processes, instructions, workflows, job aids, handoffs, and resources employees rely on to perform consistently.
Technology is part of it, but Tool Support is not simply an IT issue.
A process can fail even when the software works. Instructions may be outdated. Ownership may be unclear. Employees may have to enter the same information in several places. A critical handoff may depend on someone noticing an email at the right time.
When Tool Support is strong, employees can find the information they need, understand what happens next, and complete the work without building their own private operating system.
When it is weak, employees absorb the friction.
They remember what the system should prompt. They chase information that should arrive automatically. They correct reports that should be accurate and maintain trackers that should not be necessary.
The work gets done, but only because employees are compensating for its design.
The cost is larger than the extra spreadsheet
A workaround may look small when viewed in isolation.
Five unnecessary minutes may not attract leadership attention. When 20 employees repeat the same manual step several times a week, the organization begins losing meaningful capacity.
The cost may also show up as duplicate work, delayed decisions, missed handoffs, inconsistent results, compliance exposure, customer frustration, and dependence on a small number of experienced employees.
Those costs rarely appear under a line item called weak Tool Support. They show up as overtime, rework, missed targets, turnover, quality problems, and managers spending time resolving issues the process should have prevented.
That is why these problems can remain expensive for years without being clearly identified.
Some workarounds reveal a better way to work
Not every workaround should be accepted.
Some create unnecessary risk and need to stop. Others reveal that employees have found a clearer, faster, or more reliable way to perform the work.
The answer may be to standardize the better method, automate repetitive work, improve the handoff, update the instructions, or redesign the process entirely.
The point is not to protect every informal practice. The point is to investigate before deciding.
A workaround is information. It shows where the official process and the actual work have stopped matching.
Questions leaders should ask
When employees are working outside the approved process, start with these questions:
What does the workaround allow employees to accomplish?
Identify the function it serves before removing it.
Where does the official process break down?
Look for missing information, unclear ownership, slow approvals, outdated instructions, unreliable systems, or weak handoffs.
How much time is spent compensating for the problem?
Include the time employees spend checking, correcting, copying, chasing, and manually transferring information.
Who knows how the process really works?
Determine whether execution depends on knowledge that has never been documented or shared.
What would stop working if the workaround disappeared tomorrow?
The answer will tell you whether the workaround is optional or whether it has become essential infrastructure.
Has the problem already been raised?
Employees may have reported the issue several times and created the workaround only after the organization failed to correct it.
These questions help leaders distinguish between an employee refusing to follow a workable process and an employee compensating for a process that does not reliably support the work.
What are your employees working around?
Every organization has friction. The risk begins when compensating for that friction becomes so normal that leaders stop seeing it.
Shadow spreadsheets, manual reminders, duplicate entry, unofficial approval routes, and dependence on one experienced employee are not just minor inefficiencies. They may be signs that the work is harder to execute than it should be.
The visible workaround may point to weak Tool Support. It may also be compensating for overloaded capacity, unclear priorities, skill gaps, or another workplace condition.
The behavior alone does not tell you which condition is actually driving the problem. That is where a more focused diagnosis matters.
Find the condition creating the friction
The free JL³ Performance Pulse™ helps you look beyond the visible workaround and identify which workplace condition may be contributing to rework, delays, inconsistent execution, or hidden capacity loss.
In just a few minutes, you’ll receive a focused snapshot that helps you determine where to investigate first instead of continuing to treat the symptom.
Take the Free JL³ Performance Pulse™
Already know the problem is affecting an entire team, department, or workflow? The VIP Performance Intensive helps leaders identify what is interfering with execution and build a focused 90-Day Performance Action Blueprint™ to correct it.
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Sources
Southwest Airlines, “Southwest Airlines Plans to Boost Operational Resiliency to Enhance Support for Employees and Customers”
U.S. Department of Transportation, “DOT Penalizes Southwest Airlines $140 Million for 2022 Holiday Meltdown”