There are four general reasons why employees don’t do what they are told. The first is that they don’t understand. Let’s look at a hypothetical exchange between you and an employee: 

Employee: “I don’t know why you want me to go to the car with every customer.” 

You: “Because it’s our process” 

Employee: “But you don’t understand there’s five people in line waiting to get written up and if they see me leave, I might lose those customers and sales. For what? To get a tire size?” 

You: “The idea is so that you get an accurate size, you can look at the condition of the vehicle, get a chance to build rapport with the customer and also look for things like alignment wear, etc.” 

Employee: “But I’m busy. Don’t you get that? We can do all those things later. Right now, I just have to get through the rush. I’m not skipping steps. I’m moving them to a place where I can control it.” 

The second reason: there’s no real-life proof. An employee might tell you, “Your idea doesn’t work. I do the work every single day and you’re asking me to do it your way and I’m telling you it’s a waste of time. My sales are good — one of the top in the district. What you’re telling me to do may work in other stores, but if I do it here, sales will go down.” 

The next reason? The employee sees no need for it. “I’m fine,” the employee says. “I don’t need to do it another way.” 

And finally, the fourth reason: the employee sees no value. “When I try to do it your way, something always backfires. As a matter of fact, last time we tried just two days later you guys got on my case about car count decline. If I don’t do it your way, you get on my case about process and if I try it your way, you get on my case about results.” 

In 1989, Ferdinand Fournies wrote a book called “Why Employees Don’t Do What They Should and What to Do About It.” This seminal work was based on human psychology and real-life observations of over 25,000 managers. You don’t get to argue with the reasons in the book. What’s hard to distinguish sometimes is why employees choose those paths instead of just doing what they’re told. 

Some are obvious, like management has task and goal expectations, but the company doesn’t provide the right tools or there is a physical limitation like an employee in a wheelchair and the store has product up a flight of steps. 

Some are more subtle — for example, “They don’t believe it’s possible” or “They don’t know why they should” versus “They don’t know they are supposed to.” 

“Should” and “supposed” are my two favorite little nuggets in the book. It’s a tiny little crack in management structure that, if left to sit in the seasonal changes and weather, becomes a huge chasm in the workplace process. 

Time allows for the undesirable behaviors to take shape, to get a stronghold inside the store’s process and become the “proof” that not following the rules works. It becomes nearly impossible to argue against, as those in the trenches of day-to-day customer advising and selling get to use hundreds of lived examples illustrating why your way has flaws and why their way is better. The truth is, their way is just easier, which is also addressed in the book. But try having that argument with someone who is actively up against strong targets and goals. The discussion quickly becomes a clay shooting contest. You launch an idea. They shoot it down. They launch a reason. You shoot it down. Repeat until exhausted. 

The quick and free answer to this problem is to prioritize your needs in the process and meticulously deal with each one of them at a time, until there is no other process. Yours has won outright in performance, in employee morale — doing it right feels good — and results. The pain of change is less than the pain of not changing. It’s more efficient to get out to the customer’s car and get the tire size for the effectiveness of the entire interaction.

But the employee is also correct. Going out to the car while there are five waiting customers and you are by yourself flat-out stinks. And there is no instant gratification like there is when you finally plow through that 11 a.m. rush and you can come up for air and start organizing workflow out in the shop. You can’t compete with that feeling, so you shouldn’t. 

Selling and advising customers is a series of small, short-term commitments that, when added together, form a very tight, long-lasting relationship. Mistakes can be made. But an irregular write-up experience, followed by missed deadlines and promised phone calls and continuous surprises in the process — “We can’t find your wheel lock after the vehicle was dropped off four hours ago” — creates mistrust. Suspicious customers never buy recommendations.