How to Deal with Employees Who Don’t Follow Instructions
A vast majority of employers and managers have to deal with employees who don’t follow instructions at some point. These employees constantly make excuses, miss deadlines, and appear to disregard directions and procedures blatantly.
This disregard for instructions may result from employees’ lack of understanding. To ensure adherence to the company’s guidelines, provide clear instructions, offer training, and distribute responsibilities among employees. The use of employee monitoring software can also be helpful in this regard.
Continue reading to learn more about how you can ensure employees follow instructions.
Why Employees Don’t Follow Instructions
Employees play a crucial role in their company’s success by adhering to instructions. However, there are times when employees may not follow the instructions provided by their bosses or managers.
This can happen for various reasons, such as:
Challenging Instructions
It’s possible that the instructions seem confusing to certain employees. At times, it is difficult for individuals to understand a great deal of information, even if there are no significant language barriers. Many employees consider following instructions to be a time- and effort-consuming task.
They might imagine that following instructions takes more time than it actually does. In addition, they may experience feelings of being overwhelmed by the amount of work that is required.
Incoherent Instructions
Employers frequently presume that all their instructions are logical and make perfect sense. However, this is only sometimes true. In some cases, the explanation is not always easy to understand.
Consequently, people frequently conclude that it is acceptable to violate the procedures, regardless of whether or not they did so intentionally.
Old Approach
Experienced employees are often familiar with the company’s procedures from previous implementations.
As a result, they may skip some steps in the instructions because they’ve encountered them before. These employees feel confident that they don’t need to follow new instructions as they’ve done well with the previous ones.
Uninformed Employees
Many organizations tend to keep their processes confidential. Oftentimes, these procedures are not conveyed to the employees as well. This is a common reason given by workers when they don’t follow instructions.
General Work Culture
Employee behavior is heavily impacted by the general culture at the workplace. If employees observe other employees not complying with instructions, they might think it okay to do so.
How to Deal with Employees Who Don’t Follow Instructions
If you feel that your employees are not following instructions, it is important to identify the reasons for their behavior. Once you have identified the reason, you can implement the following steps to prevent this behavior:
Draft Simple and Clear Instructions
You should avoid unclear and overly complex instructions. Instead, it is essential to make sure that the instructions are concise and easy to comprehend. Make sure to use clear and simple language and provide detailed instructions.
Provide visual aids, such as diagrams or drawings, to clarify any actions that may be unclear. Make sure your staff has plenty of time to ask questions and practice the process as well.
Be Consistent with the Procedures
Consistency is important when it comes to workplace procedures. When employees have to follow different procedures for the same task they are likely to make mistakes and be confused.
Employees may experience feelings of anger and resentment as a result of inconsistent procedures.
On the other hand, if procedures are consistently carried out in the same manner, then employees will have a greater chance of remembering them and carrying them out in the appropriate manner.
In addition, they will have the notion that their contributions are significant and that their labor is valued.
Clarify the Responsibility
It is important to assign responsibilities for each task to get employees to follow the company’s instructions.
When employees are delegated specific responsibilities, they will possess a clear understanding of what is required to comply with company protocols. This will contribute to making the workplace more safe and effective.
Provide Training
However, it is not sufficient to merely have procedures in place. Employees also need training on how to adhere to these protocols. If they are not provided required training, they may make mistakes or take shortcuts, which might lead to serious problems.
When employees receive specialized training on procedural requirements using employee training software and are monitored with employee monitoring software such as Wolfeye, they are more likely to be able to follow procedures correctly and prevent mistakes.
Furthermore, it is helpful to provide employees with regular refresher courses so they are aware of any modifications or updates to procedures.
Review Existing Procedures
An employee’s failure to follow work instructions is often caused by a lack of thorough evaluation.
It is vital to examine procedures periodically because they often change. You need to conduct a reevaluation of the procedures that are currently in place to evaluate whether or not any modifications are required.
This may involve introducing new technology, reducing an unnecessary step, or adding or removing processes to accommodate a new requirement. This will make sure that all parties are following the correct procedures and that everyone understands them.
How Wolfeye Can Help Employees Follow Instructions
Employee monitoring software such as Wolfeye encourages workplace accountability. This software allows employers to ensure that their employees are meeting their targets and performing their tasks responsibly by tracking their activities.
This is particularly helpful in cases where employees are not following instructions.
Monitoring tools may supply data and metrics that can be utilized to measure the performance of employees and to keep them accountable for their work.
This can result in a culture of accountability, in which employees are encouraged to perform to the best of their abilities and achieve their objectives. It can also help identify potential problem areas for the client.
Conclusion
Managing and ensuring that your employees follow instructions manually can be challenging. Employee monitoring software, such as Wolfeye, can track employee activities and highlight reasons for any difficulties in following specific instructions.