Have you ever defined a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) only to find out later that nobody is following it?  In other words, you take the time to define the step-by-step procedures, document them and communicate them but employees fail to actually follow them.

With SOPs there are two major hurdles an organization has to face.  The first has to do with SOP content.  Getting a set of clearly defined and consistently documented SOPs is a challenge unto itself.  But once the SOP content is completed – organizations are often faced with another challenge whereby employees don’t always execute the SOPs even though they’ve been defined.

After all, if an employee has been doing something one way for several months or even years – when you introduce a new standard operating procedure, the real battle is getting them to change their old behavior.

If you want employees to actually execute the SOPs you define and document, you need measurable accountability.  It’s that simple.  A general rule of thumb to keep in mind is that the degree to which you want people to comply (another way of saying “execute” or another way of saying “change their behavior”) is tied directly to the degree to which they are held measurably accountable.

When it comes to SOPs, I recommend the following four points of measurable accountability that map to the acronym SECA.

·         Sign Offs- Have people sign off on the SOPs applicable to their job function.  By acknowledging the SOP, there’s no opportunity for someone to say “I didn’t know about that.” Or “I must have missed that email.”  This is the first step towards changing someone’s behavior.

·         Exams- Ask employees to answer a few questions to demonstrate they have an accurate understanding of the SOP.  It doesn’t take many questions – just a few.  And of course you don’t have to call this point of measurable accountability “Exams” you can call it whatever you want – “Tests”, “Reviews”, “Key Questions”, etc…

·         Contributions- If someone identifies a new and improved way of doing something, hold them accountable for contributing these ideas.  In other words, people can’t just deviate from an SOP because they have found a “better way.”  They need to be held accountable for submitting these contributions so everyone can benefit from the feedback and the SOPs can ultimately be improved.

·         Audits- The final point of measurable accountability involves auditing your people to determine if they are actually executing the SOPs.  These quality assurance efforts whereby work samples are reviewed helps to represent an accurate picture of which people are actually following the SOPs and which people are not.

One final note.  Although a total of four points of measureable accountability have been listed, you might want to start with only one or two.  Find the combination that works for your organization.  Wherever you start, the key is the measurable accountability.  For instance, if employees sign off but you don’t keep track of this information– then it’s not measurable accountability.  Remember, people will change their behavior based on the degree to which they are held measurably accountable.