How to Get Employees to Follow Your Processes
For the HR, L&D and operations leaders who were handed the job of making it stick.
By Lisa Gonzalez, EOS Implementer® and co-author of Process! (The EOS Mastery Series). Updated October 19, 2026.
The short answer. Employees follow a process when four things happen after it is written down. They are trained on it. Someone measures whether it is followed. A manager acts on what the measure shows. And the process is updated when the work changes. Most companies stop at training. The other three are where processes stick.
You did not fail. Training was never enough on its own.
If you work in HR or L&D, you have probably lived this. The leadership team says, "People aren't following our processes. Can you set up some training?" You build it. People attend. Completion hits 100 percent. A few weeks later, the old way is back, and the question lands on your desk again.
Here is what I want you to hear first. You did not fail. You were asked to solve a leadership problem with a training tool.
Training is where a process starts. It is not where it sticks.
U.S. companies spent $102.8 billion on training in 2025, about $874 per learner, and gave each employee about 40 hours of it (Training magazine). Most of that money pays for the first step. The other three steps cost almost nothing. They take leadership.
Before I co-authored Process!, I was an employment defense lawyer for Fortune 100 companies. I worked beside owners and HR leaders who wrote the policy, trained the team, and still had to explain why nobody followed the procedure.
"A process nobody follows is a leadership problem before it is a training problem."
Lisa Gonzalez, co-author of Process!
Why employees don't follow processes, even at well-run companies
Good companies run into this all the time. The reasons are almost never the people.
- The process is too long. Our book says one to five pages. Less is more, and if you land at three pages or fewer you are doing great.
- It lives in one person's head. Nobody wrote it down, so everyone does it a little differently.
- People were trained once and never checked. Without a measure, nobody knows it slipped until a customer does.
- No manager owns it. Managers see it as HR's program, so it stays HR's problem.
- The leadership team never committed out loud. If the leaders don't say "this is how we work here," nobody else will either.
Go deeper: why employees don't follow SOPs.
Who owns process adherence: HR, L&D or the manager?
Everyone owns a piece, and HR should never carry it alone.
| Who | Owns |
|---|---|
| The leadership team | Deciding which processes matter and that they will be followed |
| The process owner | Keeping one process current and simple |
| Managers | Measuring and managing it every week |
| HR and L&D | Building the training, the onboarding and the rhythm that keeps it alive |
When HR is asked to own adherence without owning the managers, the work stalls. Your job is not to enforce. Your job is to build the system and hand the leadership team their part of it.
One more line worth drawing. A policy is a rule, like twelve weeks of paid leave for a new baby. It lives in your handbook, and HR owns it. A process is how the work gets done. Keep the two separate and both get shorter.
How to build a training plan for a new process
Here is the plan I give leadership teams. Seven steps, in order.
- Get the leadership team to commit. Name the process, its owner and the date it goes live.
- Simplify before you train. Document the twenty percent of steps that drive eighty percent of the result.
- Package it where the work happens. A checklist, a short video or a one-page guide, stored where people already look.
- Train the people who do the work, with their manager in the room.
- Pick one measure. Is it being followed, how often, and with what result?
- Put the manager check-in on the calendar. Weekly at first.
- Set the update date. At least once a year, and any time the work changes.
Steps 1 and 6 are the two HR can't do alone. Bring this list to your leadership team and ask for those two by name.
Training is where a process starts. Steps 5, 6 and 7 are where it sticks.
How to measure process adherence
Pick one measure per process. Make it something a manager can check in five minutes.
- The share of jobs closed with the checklist complete
- How often a step is skipped in a sample of five records a week
- Complaints or rework tied to that process
Review it in the leadership team's weekly meeting. In Process! we call the goal Followed By All: every process trained, measured, managed and updated, by everyone who touches it.
Rolling out processes across multiple locations
More people and more sites make one thing more important: one process, one owner, one measure, at every location. Learn it first, then teach others to apply it. The people who learn the process first teach each location how to apply it. See how to roll out a new process.
This is also where I work with companies directly. Process Consulting for Large Companies goes department by department: document, simplify, package and roll out the training. I take three companies a year.
Do we need to run on EOS?
No. The method comes from Process!, a book in the EOS Traction® Library, and it works with or without EOS. You don't need an EOS Implementer, and you don't need to learn EOS vocabulary. If your company does run on EOS®, this is the Process Component, and your leadership team will recognize it.
When this isn't the right fit
- Regulated SOP compliance (FDA, GMP, OSHA) needs a quality system and a compliance specialist.
- Choosing software is a separate project. Tools work better once each process is short and owned.
- A leadership team that won't commit. No training will hold until they do. Start with the conversation below.
Bring it to your leadership team
You don't have to make this case alone. Here are four ways to take it upstairs.
- Run the numbers first. The free Profit Leak Calculator gives your company its own range in about five minutes. Across hundreds of workshops and consulting engagements, I consistently see 5 to 10% of profit leaking out through process gaps.
- Bring Lisa to your leadership team. The One-Day Process Workshop for Your Team is one day on Zoom, up to 15 people. Your team commits, names its Core Processes, documents the first one together, and leaves with a roadmap.
- Give the team the workshop. The Process Self-Implementer Workshop is nine short rooms your leadership team works through together. Then the open seats go to the managers who run the processes. $1,495 a year for up to 7 users. Rollout Packs add 3 more users when you're ready.
- For large companies. Process Consulting for Large Companies is for $50M+ in revenue, 200+ employees, or more than one location.
Training is where a process starts. You can be the one who makes it stick.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get employees to actually follow our SOPs?
Keep them short, train on them where the work happens, measure one thing, and have managers act on it every week. Most SOPs fail after training because nobody checks. Our book says one to five pages, and three or fewer is better. Give every SOP an owner and an update date.
Why don't employees follow processes even after we train them?
Because training is the first of four steps, not the last. After training, someone has to measure whether the process is followed, a manager has to act on what the measure shows, and the process has to be updated when the work changes. Skip those three and the old habits come back.
Who is responsible when employees don't follow procedures, HR or their manager?
Their manager, with HR's support. HR and L&D build the training and the rhythm. The manager measures and manages day to day. The leadership team decides which processes matter and backs the managers. When HR is asked to enforce processes alone, adherence stalls, because HR does not run the work.
What's the best way to roll out a new process across multiple locations?
Learn it first, then teach others to apply it. The people who learn the process first teach each location to apply it, with one owner, one measure and one check-in rhythm for every site. Train managers alongside their teams, so the people who manage the process understand it as well as the people who run it.
How do I measure whether employees are following a process?
Pick one measure per process and check it on a set rhythm. Good measures are simple: the share of jobs closed with the checklist complete, how often a step is skipped in a weekly sample of records, or complaints tied to the process. Managers review it weekly.
What should I do when an employee keeps ignoring a procedure?
Check the process first, then the person. Is the process short, current and trained? Does the manager measure it? If yes, the manager addresses it directly and documents it like any other performance issue. If no, fix the process before anyone is disciplined.
How often should we review processes and retrain people on them?
At least once a year, and any time the work changes. Retrain when a process is updated, when someone new joins, and when the measure shows it slipping. A process that is never updated stops matching the work, and people stop following it.
Do we need software to get people to follow processes?
Not first. It is a management problem before it is a software problem. Tools help you store, find and track processes, and they work better once each process is short and owned. No tool makes a manager check whether a process was followed.