Someone creates a spreadsheet to track work that isn’t visible in the system.

Another employee keeps a personal reminder list because there’s no reliable notification when something needs attention.

A team starts sending side emails because the normal handoff doesn’t provide enough information.

Someone enters the same information into two systems because they don’t communicate with each other.

And eventually, those extra activities become part of how the work gets done.

They’re workarounds.

Employees usually don’t create them because they want more work.

They create them because something in the existing process isn’t helping them get the work done.

That’s why a recurring workaround deserves attention.

What Is a Workaround?

A workaround is an informal activity, tool, or method employees use to accomplish something the established process or system doesn’t adequately support.

It might be:

• A personal spreadsheet
• A handwritten checklist
• A separate tracking log
• Reminder emails
• A side conversation or group chat
• Duplicate data entry
• A manual approval outside the normal workflow
• A personal list of exceptions employees have learned to remember
• An extra verification step that isn’t documented anywhere

Not every workaround indicates a serious process problem.

Sometimes unusual situations require employees to adapt.

The warning sign is when the workaround becomes recurring, predictable, and necessary for normal work to get done.

At that point, it may no longer be an exception.

It may be part of the real process.

The Documented Process and the Actual Process May Be Different

An SOP may say:

Complete Step A, then send the work to Department B.

But employees may know the real sequence is:

Complete Step A → Update the tracking spreadsheet → Email Susan → Wait for confirmation → Send the work to Department B.

If those additional activities are required every time, they’re part of how the process actually operates—even if they don’t appear in the documentation.

That’s an important distinction during process mapping.

Don’t map only what the procedure says should happen.

Ask employees:

What do you actually do?

Then listen carefully when someone says:

“Well, technically we’re supposed to do this, but what we really do is…”

That sentence can reveal a lot about the process.

Workarounds Often Solve a Real Problem

It’s easy to look at an unofficial spreadsheet or extra step and immediately decide:

We need to get rid of that.

Maybe you do.

But first ask:

Why does it exist?

The spreadsheet may provide visibility the primary system doesn’t provide.

The reminder email may compensate for a missing notification.

The extra approval may exist because responsibilities aren’t clear.

The duplicate entry may bridge two systems that don’t exchange information.

The side conversation may provide information missing from the formal handoff.

The workaround may be inefficient, but it may also be performing a function the official process currently needs.

Remove it without understanding that function, and you may remove the thing employees are using to keep the process moving.

What Is the Process Making Employees Compensate For?

Instead of asking only:

Why aren’t employees following the process?

Ask:

What is the process making them compensate for?

That changes the investigation.

Now you’re looking for the condition behind the behavior.

Maybe employees don’t have the information they need when they need it.

Maybe the system doesn’t make the status of work visible.

Maybe ownership becomes unclear after a handoff.

Maybe the documented process doesn’t account for common exceptions.

Maybe an approval occurs too late.

Maybe employees have developed a faster way to complete an activity because the established method creates unnecessary effort.

The workaround becomes a clue.

Follow the Workaround Back to Its Cause

When you discover a recurring workaround, don’t stop at identifying it.

Trace it.

Ask:

When did employees begin doing this?

What problem does it solve?

What happens if they don’t do it?

How often is it needed?

Who depends on it?

Does it compensate for missing information, visibility, ownership, timing, or system capability?

Does it create another risk somewhere downstream?

Those questions help distinguish between an unnecessary habit and an activity that exists because of a real process condition.

Workarounds Have Costs

A workaround can keep work moving while creating other problems.

Personal spreadsheets may contain outdated information.

Manual tracking may depend on one employee remembering to update it.

Side communications may leave other people without visibility.

Duplicate data entry consumes time and creates opportunities for inconsistency.

Undocumented steps make training harder because new employees don’t know the process everyone else has learned informally.

And when a workaround depends heavily on one experienced employee, that employee can become a hidden point of process dependency.

So the objective isn’t to celebrate workarounds.

It’s to understand what they’re telling you.

Measure the Pattern

You don’t need a complicated measurement system to begin examining workarounds.

Start by identifying:

Frequency: How often is the workaround used?

Dependency: Can normal work continue without it?

Effort: How much additional time does it require?

Reach: How many people or departments depend on it?

Risk: What happens when the workaround fails or the person maintaining it isn’t available?

Cause: What process condition is it compensating for?

A workaround used twice a year for unusual exceptions deserves different attention from a spreadsheet used every day by twelve employees to manage work the primary system can’t track.

The pattern matters.

Don’t Automate the Workaround Before Understanding It

There’s another reason to examine workarounds carefully.

Organizations sometimes see repetitive manual activity and immediately think:

We should automate this.

But automating a workaround without understanding why it exists can simply make an inefficient process run faster.

Before automating it, determine whether the activity should exist at all.

Ask:

Is this step necessary?

What problem is it solving?

Could the underlying process be changed so the workaround is no longer needed?

Automation should support a process you’ve intentionally chosen—not preserve unnecessary friction because that’s how employees happen to work today.

The Workaround Is Process Information

Employees are often closest to the friction in a process.

They experience the missing information.

They feel the waiting.

They see the system limitations.

They deal with unclear handoffs.

And they figure out ways to keep the work moving.

Those solutions may not always be ideal.

But they contain information.

So when you discover a recurring workaround, don’t immediately remove it.

Don’t immediately automate it.

And don’t automatically assume employees are simply refusing to follow the established process.

First understand why the workaround exists.

Because sometimes the unofficial process tells you more about how the work actually gets done than the official process does.

Don’t remove the workaround until you understand what it’s working around.

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