Understanding non-compliance with administrative policy

This article is written by Lewis S. Eisen, principal of Perfect Policies and former public servant in the Canadian government

Civil servants often complain that the level of compliance with their organisation’s operational and administrative policies is too low and needs to rise. It’s a common problem.

Some people react to it with an authoritarian solution, recommending that we increase policy enforcement.

That’s a possible solution, granted, but it has limited application. Increased enforcement of a policy will have an effect on compliance levels only when those levels are a product of people’s willingness to comply. But what if something else is at work?

I’ve taught hundreds of policy writers how to improve buy-in to their policies and directives. Everybody who attends wants to increase the levels of compliance with policies in their organisations. What’s interesting, though, are their explanations of why people aren’t following the rules.

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I always hear the same descriptions of the offenders: some people don’t care, some don’t think it’s important, and some deliberately flout the rules. In other words, what the policy writers are describing is apathy, indifference, and disdain. The thinking is that when someone doesn’t comply with a policy, it’s a reflection of a bad attitude.

That interpretation leads the policy writer to suggest a solution involving increased enforcement, stricter penalties, and more training on the importance of the policies, all of which are intended to address people’s willingness to comply.

But maybe this interpretation of why people don’t follow the rules jumps to unfair conclusions.

Professionals from all domains are prone to logical fallacies in their reasoning and civil servants are no exception. In this case, we may be seeing an example of a fundamental attribution error at work. (I’m borrowing from Wikipedia here, not because I consider it the source of universal truth, but because it explains the concepts in easy-to-understand terms.)

Fundamental attribution errors are only presumptions, and they are easily overcome when evidence to the contrary is presented.

In psychology, an attribution error refers to a systematic error made when looking for reasons to explain one’s own and others’ behaviors. The error sways our assumptions in a specific direction, at least until we are presented with evidence to the contrary. The catch is that attribution errors are stealthy and we are susceptible to them without being aware of it.

A good example of an attribution error is the self-serving bias error. This bias predicts that we tend to view our successes in life and work as a product of our skills, but tend to view our failures as caused by external factors beyond our control. When we succeed it’s because we’re competent, but when we fail it’s because something has interfered.

Of the many types of attribution errors, the most relevant to this discussion is actor-observer bias. When evaluating a series of actions taken by another, this form of bias predicts that we will attribute other people’s motivations to personal traits while attributing our own motivations to situational factors.

When we don’t hold a door open for someone else, it’s because we’re in a hurry. When someone else doesn’t hold a door open for us, it’s because they have no manners.

Actor-observer bias may be affecting how we interpret compliance with policy.

Think of an area where you may not be fully compliant with all of the rules. You may find the policies around records and information management to be too numerous to keep track of, for example. We’re not bad people, so we are likely to justify our failure to comply on the grounds that those policies are unclear, too time-consuming, or inconvenient. The demands and pressures of our job mean that some corners get cut once in a while. Some of those rules are really more relevant to other parts of the team.  Whatever the reason, we are likely to attribute our non-compliance to practical and situational factors.

In contrast, when other people don’t comply with the policies we produce, we attribute it to apathy, indifference, or disdain. In many cases it never occurs to us that practical factors may be at work. Those other people, of course, explain their non-compliance by claiming that our policies are unclear, too time-consuming, or inconvenient.

As with any story that has many sides, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

This situation raises an interesting question: How would our approach to our clients differ if we knew that non-compliance was a result of situational factors rather than attitude?

At the very least, it might make us more compassionate about the struggles those colleagues are going through. It might induce us to address those practical issues instead of demanding more enforcement or greater penalties. It might even open some doors to better collaboration between groups.

Fundamental attribution errors are only presumptions, and they are easily overcome when evidence to the contrary is presented. Before reaching for the heavy hand of increased enforcement, let’s make sure that the non-compliance we want to change is truly a product of attitude rather than circumstance. — Lewis S. Eisen

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