Two finance clerks in the same company are asked to process supplier payments. One works from a clear checklist: the same steps, the same approvals, the same template every time. She says it is a relief, because she never has to wonder whether she has done it properly. The other works under an identical checklist and calls it a cage, because it will not let him handle the unusual case sensibly. The same standard, applied to the same job, feels like freedom to one and confinement to the other.
That contrast is the subject of this piece. Standardising how work is done is one of the most common things businesses do to improve their operations, and it has genuine human benefits. It can also take something from people. Which of the two happens depends on how the standard is designed. What follows is a hypothesis, reasoned from general research on working conditions, not a study of South African workplaces, and the example is illustrative.
How standards can give people room
A well-made standard removes decisions that were never worth making. Nobody should have to invent a file-naming convention every Monday or work out afresh which fields an invoice needs. When those choices are settled, attention goes to the parts of the job that actually need thought. A new colleague can start without guessing, and a person returning from leave can pick up where the work stands.
The UK Health and Safety Executive's standard on role asks organisations to keep requirements clear and to give people information that helps them understand their responsibilities. A written, sensible standard is one way of doing precisely that. For many employees, the dividend is predictability: knowing what good looks like, and knowing that it is the same for everyone.
There is a fairness aspect too. Where each manager applies their own unwritten rules, similar people are treated differently, and those who understand the informal rules do better. A shared standard can make treatment more consistent. The discussion in how to make ownership clear at every stage touches on the same clarity at the business level.
How standards can take room away
The same tool can work in the opposite direction. The HSE standard on control describes the aim that people feel able to influence how they carry out their work, and speaks of encouraging staff to use their abilities and initiative. A standard that dictates every step, with no route for judgement, can cut across that aim.
The self-determination research summarised at selfdeterminationtheory.org describes autonomy, competence and relatedness as basic psychological needs and reports that when they are thwarted people are more likely to experience ill-being and poorer functioning. A rigid standard does not necessarily thwart autonomy. But where it is imposed without explanation, applied to work that varies a great deal, or enforced for its own sake, it can look to skilled people like a statement that they are not trusted to think.
Mellorca has looked at the extreme form of this in when software workarounds replace professional discretion and at the organisational side in why good judgement gets buried under process. This piece is about the earlier question: what separates a standard that frees from one that confines?
An illustrative example
Consider a hypothetical South African accounting department in a mid-sized manufacturer. Management introduces a standard month-end checklist of forty steps, in a fixed order, signed off by a supervisor. The junior accountants like it. They no longer have to remember what the senior staff did last time, and mistakes drop.
The senior accountant, who has run month-end for eleven years, finds the order wasteful. For a particular entity, she knows it is quicker to do the intercompany steps first. The checklist forbids this, and the supervisor, wary of exceptions, will not sign off a different order. She follows the checklist, loses a few hours each month, and begins to wonder what her expertise is for. Nobody has stolen her job. Her discretion has quietly been spent.
The illustration is not a claim that most checklists have this effect. It shows the shape of the difference. The standard helped the people for whom the work was unfamiliar and constrained the one for whom it was not.
Features that separate the two outcomes
From the research and from how standards are typically introduced, a few design features seem to matter.
- What is fixed and what is flexible. A good standard is explicit about the outcome that must be the same (a complete, approved payment record) and the method that may vary (the order of steps).
- Who helped write it. The HSE standard on change emphasises sharing information promptly, consulting staff properly and giving them real opportunities to shape proposals. People who helped shape a standard are more likely to experience it as theirs.
- A way to propose changes. If there is a clear route for someone to say "this step is wasteful" and see it considered, the standard becomes a living agreement rather than a fixed decree.
- A defined exception route. The unusual case needs a sanctioned way through. Without one, people create unofficial ones. This is explored in how to diagnose a business that runs on exceptions.
- Proportion. Standardise the repetitive, error-prone work first. Work that is varied and judgement-heavy may deserve guidance rather than a script.
On the practical side, the question of which processes deserve to be written down first is covered in what business processes need documentation first. A related caution is in why automating a broken process makes the problem worse: standardising a poor process simply makes the poor process consistent.
The trade-offs in plain terms
- Consistency against discretion. More of the first usually means less of the second. Neither is automatically better.
- Newcomers against experts. Standards often help the least experienced most and can frustrate the most experienced. A single standard may need a lighter version for people who have shown they can be trusted with more latitude.
- Efficiency against learning. If people never have to think about a task, they may not learn why it is done that way. Some craft knowledge is lost when judgement is replaced by procedure.
- Pace against ownership. Introducing a standard quickly gets the benefit sooner, but people who had no part in it may comply on the surface and work around it underneath.
- Stability against adaptation. A standard that is hard to change will lag behind the business. The upkeep of the standard is itself work, and someone needs to own it.
- Measurement. Standardised work is easier to monitor, which can help or can feel like surveillance depending on how the information is used.
It is also quite possible that, for a given task, the right answer is not to standardise at all. Craft, advisory and relationship work often varies too much from case to case for a script to help, and a short set of principles with a named person to ask may serve people better than a long procedure. Deciding what to leave unstandardised is as much a part of the design as deciding what to fix.
Interpreting the pattern
The Mellorca reading is that standardisation tends to be experienced as freedom when people understand it, helped shape it, can see what it fixes and what it leaves open, and have a way to change it. It tends to be experienced as confinement when it arrives as a rule without a reason, covers judgement-heavy work and has no door for the exception.
This is a hypothesis for the reader to test locally. A simple test: ask two people who do the same standardised task whether the standard helps them. If their answers differ sharply, the difference is worth understanding before the next standard is written.
Sources and further reading
- Management Standards - Control - HSE (last verified 10 October 2026)
- Management Standards - Role - HSE (last verified 10 October 2026)
- Management Standards - Change - HSE (last verified 10 October 2026)
- Theory – selfdeterminationtheory.org (last verified 10 October 2026)
Related Mellorca reading
- The Owner Who Can't Decide Without the Spreadsheet Wizard
- The Partner Who Could Grow the Firm If Admin Let Go
- Why Teams Stop Suggesting Improvements