Your Best Employee Has a Workaround. That’s Not Necessarily Good News.
Every workplace has employees who know how to get things done.
They know who to call when the normal process takes too long. They keep their own spreadsheet because the system doesn’t give them the information they need. They have saved copies of forms no one can find. They know which approval really matters, which step can be skipped and which person will respond when something is urgent.
Those employees are often highly valued, and for good reason. They solve problems and keep work moving. But their ability to work around problems can also make it harder for leaders to see that a problem exists.
When a capable employee consistently compensates for a poor process, the organization may see good performance without seeing how much unnecessary effort it takes to produce it.
When the Workaround Becomes Part of the Job
A workaround usually starts because something about the normal way of doing the work isn’t working well enough.
Maybe employees have to enter the same information into multiple systems. Maybe they have to search several places to find what they need. An approval process may take longer than the work itself, or employees may depend on one person who knows how to solve a recurring problem.
Eventually, employees figure out another way.
That may solve the immediate problem, but it doesn’t correct the workplace condition that created it. In fact, successful workarounds can allow that condition to remain in place much longer because employees continue producing acceptable results.
From a performance perspective, this is where I would start looking at System Cues and Tool Support.
The Process May Be Asking Employees to Compensate
System Cues are the processes, expectations and signals built into the way work gets done. They help employees understand what to do, when to do it and how work should move through the organization.
When those cues are clear and consistent, employees can spend more of their attention on the work itself. When they are confusing, contradictory or unnecessarily complicated, employees have to figure out how to navigate the system before they can complete the actual task.
Consider an employee who needs approval before making a routine purchase. The official process requires a request to move through three people, but everyone knows the second approval rarely adds anything and frequently causes delays. Experienced employees learn to contact that person directly before submitting the request so it will move faster when it arrives.
The employee has solved the delay for herself. The approval process is still inefficient.
A leader looking only at whether purchases are being completed may never see the extra conversations, reminders and follow-up that employees have added to make the process work.
Sometimes the Tool Is Creating the Extra Work
Tool Support can create the same problem.
Employees are remarkably good at adapting to tools that don’t meet the needs of their work. They create spreadsheets, personal tracking systems, email folders, handwritten notes and separate documents to hold information the official system doesn’t provide.
Sometimes those solutions are useful innovations. Sometimes they are evidence that employees are doing additional work simply to compensate for the tools they have been given.
The distinction matters.
If one employee creates a spreadsheet because she prefers seeing information in a different format, there may not be a performance problem. If everyone on the team maintains a separate spreadsheet because the primary system cannot provide information they need every day, I would want to understand why.
The spreadsheet isn't the problem. It is information about the condition surrounding the work.
Your Strongest Employees May Hide the Problem the Longest
This is one reason performance problems can be difficult to diagnose.
Your most experienced employees already know how to navigate the system. They have accumulated shortcuts, relationships and knowledge that allow them to perform despite conditions that make the work unnecessarily difficult.
Then someone new joins the team and struggles.
It can be tempting to compare the new employee with the experienced employee and conclude that the difference is skill, initiative or motivation. Sometimes it is. But the experienced employee may also know seven things that aren't documented, use three workarounds that were never taught and depend on relationships the new employee hasn't had time to build.
That changes the question a leader should ask.
Instead of asking only, “Why can't this employee perform like my best employee?” ask, “What does my best employee have to do that shouldn't be necessary?”
The answer may tell you more about the performance problem than the comparison between the two employees.
Pay Attention to How the Work Actually Gets Done
Leaders don't need to eliminate every workaround. Employees should have room to solve problems, improve processes and adapt their work when appropriate.
What leaders need to understand is why the workaround exists.
Ask your experienced employees what they do when the normal process doesn't work. Find out what information they keep outside your official systems and why they need it. Ask which steps they routinely avoid, repeat or complete differently from the documented process.
Then look for patterns.
If several capable employees have independently created ways to compensate for the same problem, that is useful information about the workplace conditions surrounding their performance.
Their ability to work around the problem shouldn't become the reason the organization never fixes it.
Look at the Conditions Behind the Performance
When employees struggle, it is easy to focus first on what the employee needs to do differently. Sometimes that is exactly where the problem is.
Other times, employees are spending part of their time and effort compensating for systems and tools that make good performance harder than it needs to be.
The JL³ Performance Pulse™ helps leaders examine six workplace conditions that can affect performance, including System Cues and Tool Support.
Take the JL³ Performance Pulse™ to identify which workplace conditions may be making performance easier or harder for your team.