Employee Checklists: How Successful Organizations Use Them

Employee Checklists are repeatable task lists that help people complete routine work consistently. Organizations use them for daily operations, onboarding, training, marketing, safety, quality control, handoffs, and compliance, especially when missing one step creates rework or risk.

The useful question is not whether employees should use checklists for everything. It is where a checklist protects valuable work without becoming micromanagement. The examples below come from successful organizations that shared how they design, use, and adapt employee checklists in practice.

You will see how teams use a daily work checklist, where spreadsheets and project tools reach their limits, and which design choices make a checklist easier to follow.

• Employee checklists for daily work
• How marketing teams use employee checklists
• Tools for employee checklists
• Best practices for employee checklists
• Run employee checklists with Process Street

Employee checklists for daily work

  New to checklists? Don’t understand what all the fuss is about? Let us explain. Atul Gawande, a surgeon and writer, wrote a book titled The Checklist Manifesto. No matter where you stand on checklists, it’s an extremely eye-opening read. Why? Mainly due to the examples of how incredibly useful checklists have been – and will continue to be. One of these examples is how checklists have benefitted the flying – and taming – of both modern planes and ones of old, as explained by Ben Brandall in an earlier post of ours:

“Much of the book revolves around the checklists used on the planes that are said to have been a huge driving factor in the World War II victory, the 299 variant of the Boeing B-17. Despite being deemed in 1935 ‘too much airplane for one pilot to fly’ by the newspapers, the beast was tamed with the power of one simple checklist.” – Ben Brandall, The Checklist Manifesto Review

Suffice to say, checklists can have a monumental impact. In the above case, it was even history-altering. But it isn’t only how pilots use (and have used) checklists that’s impressive. Gawande also draws on examples a little closer to the ground, including hospitals. A project called the Keystone Initiative introduced checklists to ICUs in the U.S. state of Michigan. The results, discussed in the below quote from The New Yorker, are nothing short of outstanding:

“In December, 2006, the Keystone Initiative published its findings in a landmark article in The New England Journal of Medicine. Within the first three months of the project, the infection rate in Michigan’s I.C.U.s decreased by sixty-six percent. The typical I.C.U. , including the ones at Sinai-Grace Hospital , cut its quarterly infection rate to zero. Michigan’s infection rates fell so low that its average I.C.U. outperformed ninety percent of I.C.U.s nationwide. In the Keystone Initiative’s first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated $175,000,000 in costs and more than 1,500 lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years , all because of a stupid little checklist.” – Atul Gawande, The Checklist

Employees at Sinai-Grace Hospital were using checklists to help save more lives than they already were. Plus, they saved a ton of money, too; a bonus that’s not to be sniffed at! This got us thinking. How does the modern workforce use employee checklists? And what advantages do they gain by using checklists? So we asked the public. And the public told us the following. Keeping with the hospital theme, Agata Gruszka at ResumeLab said:

“Checklists are like nurses: they check the pulse of your processes to make sure everything is running smoothly. Even if you feel like they can sometimes slow you down, you still need checklists to ensure your tasks are accomplished successfully. Checklists in a company setting are used to coordinate teamwork so that everyone is on the same page. In my company, the number of checklists skyrocketed as we began to scale and expand into international markets. Without them, the sheer volume of tasks to be accomplished would be impossible to handle.”

Interestingly enough, Paul Bromen, a serial entrepreneur who owns HelpfulHabitat and UponaMattress, was also inspired to use checklists after reading The Checklist Manifesto:

“We use checklists. We’ve found them to be useful after reading The Checklist Manifesto. Our company uses a lot of contractors so they can be especially helpful on-boarding new contributors. Checklists are best used for making sure that valuable tasks aren’t forgotten. If your checklists are filled with every small non-value added tasks they are micromanagement. They will backfire, because they will create extra work and disengage your teams.”

Considering how useful good checklists are for employees, the editor at The Corporate Con/noisseur, Robert Moses, uses checklists extensively for The Corporate Con/noisseur’s internal processes:

“Checklists are a great way to keep track of internal processes and requirements. They can be used to keep a uniform structure of needs and requirements and are easily read and understood by all members in our organization. Furthermore, checklists are especially useful in auditing processes which require interdepartmental collaboration. We tend to keep checklists as a means of process control. They are effective in ensuring proper completion of tasks and projects and provide a clearly defined definition of an individual’s roles and responsibilities. These checklists are managed by individual departments and are meant to provide our employees with a well-defined, clearly marked list of tasks and needs.”

Matt Secrist, the COO and Co-Founder of BKA Content, is somebody else who propels his employees to use checklists, as he says himself, “all the time”:

“Here at BKA Content, we utilize checklists all the time. Whether it’s for an everyday task or a process that only comes around every blue moon, checklists can help to ensure quality, consistency and efficiency , something you can never have too much of when trying to run a successful business. I think the main challenge comes in how you introduce those checklists to your employees and the expectations that come along with them. Are they being used primarily as a grading scale of whether or not an employee is performing well enough? Or are they provided as a “help” to make employees’ lives easier? While both things can and should be accomplished by using checklists, if the perception falls too far one way or another then you may have a cultural process problem.”

For successful checklist implementation, Secrist advocates for really understanding the why’s and how’s of employee checklists so they’re truly helping your employees. Similarly, Chane Steiner at Crediful believes in knowing what works for your employees, as checklists might not suit their style of working:

“Know your employees. Before deciding on a checklist or not, know who’s working for you. Not everyone responds well to being closely managed. Others might be very receptive to having concrete guidelines.”

Speaking of employees, ProStrategix Consulting uses checklists to not only onboard employees, but also for compliance reasons:

“We use checklists for tasks that have a compliance component. For example, we use a checklist for onboarding all our new employees. It’s actually a traceable electronic checklist, if you will, where every new hire must complete the necessary training within their first 30 days on the job. This checklist includes our workplace policies (EEO, safe workspace, safety, information security, and the like), codes of conduct, confidentiality, dress code, business etiquette, and the like. This way we have a documented paper trail if ever there are any issues from a governmental agency or an action filed by an employee.”

Meanwhile, Finance Pal‘s and Community Tax‘s CEO Jacob Dayan finds checklists particularly useful for his employees who work from home, as he explains below:

“Using checklists is a great way to stay organized by assuring that you don’t skip any steps in a process. They are a great way to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. Checklists also allow you to quickly and efficiently manage your various tasks. I have all of my employees make daily/weekly checklists if they are working from home as it allows me to quantify the amount of work they get done each day.”

As you can see, checklists are used in a whole host of ways, from double-checking that home workers are indeed working and not binging on Netflix, to onboarding clients and employees alike. Now, let’s hone our focus a little bit, and look at how one specific department in a company – the marketing department – use employee checklists to create great content, promote that content, and grow their brand to new heights.  

How do top marketing teams use employee checklists?

Marketing teams use employee checklists for work where one missed detail can damage the result: campaign launches, email sends, content reviews, design handoffs, approvals, and publishing. HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing found that proving ROI remains the leading challenge for marketers. A repeatable checklist cannot solve strategy, but it can make the execution and evidence behind each campaign consistent.

Fiona Kay at the Nigel Wright Group described how a daily work checklist coordinates email, social, and design work without constant status meetings:

“We use checklists within our digital marketing team to keep track of day-to-day tasks such as email marketing campaigns, social media posts and design work. We find this an extremely effective way of working as our roles require us to juggle many different projects and tasks within a given day and checklists ensure we don’t forget things and are constantly aware of what should be prioritised. We regularly collaborate and therefore need to keep track of each other’s progress , checklists provide an easy way of monitoring this without having to constantly check in with one another, saving valuable time and allowing us to focus our attention elsewhere.”

The team at Chanty made a related point about task size:

“We use checklists extensively in our marketing team. We’ve discovered that checklists need to have short, bite-sized tasks that are easy to tick off and keep moving. The more granular you go with your checklist, the easier it will be for employees to keep track of their work. Most importantly, ticking off an item on your checklist feels satisfactory and physically checking it off is an excellent way to motivate yourself to go on to complete an even bigger task.”

At Venngage, checklists support both quality and independence for new employees:

“The marketing team alone has several checklists (we have blog optimization checklists, outreach checklists, infographic design checklists). This is to foster an attitude of independence, responsibility, resourcefulness and confidence in new employees. With the right tools at their disposal, new and seasoned team members should feel empowered to accomplish their tasks and excel.”

The GetVoIP example shows why a checklist matters when work is irreversible and someone else may need to step in:

“We try to create process checklists for anything we do over and over again. For example, we have a checklist we follow every time we send a marketing email to our list, which is critical because you can’t unsend an email. Once it’s gone, you can’t get it back. Because of our checklist, if our main email person is out, it doesn’t cause a problem. Someone else can easily step in, follow the checklist, and send that week’s email without worrying that anything will go wrong. Those kinds of checklists help tremendously with employee turnover as well, making it easy to get new hires up to speed on our regular processes.”

Content teams use the same pattern for quality control. teambuilding.com uses a publishing checklist for titles, URLs, images, spelling, and search details:

“Checklists are essential in our business especially when it comes to content creation. For example, to publish a blog post we use a checklist to make sure we have optimized the title and URL, have compressed the images, have completed a spell check and made sure the appropriate SEO-friendly keywords are included. Checklists help us stay consistent and in-line with the standards we’ve outlined for ourselves.”

Awesome Motive treats its checklist as guidance for consistent brand execution rather than a form employees must submit:

“We use employee checklists in our business to make sure everyone is creating blog posts that stick to the company style guide. Being consistent when presenting your brand online is important, so to make sure our blog posts are consistent with our company brand, we provide our writers with a blog post checklist. It’s not mandatory for them to check each item on the list off and send it back to us. Rather, it’s more to remind them of the steps they need to take before publishing a blog post.”

Museum Hack shows how a checklist can coordinate marketing and operations around one customer commitment while still protecting individual judgment:

“We use checklists both in our marketing department and our “VIP” operations department. Here’s an example: When a client books a team building event with us, we have a checklist for making sure we book the venue, reserve a facilitator, and order wine; in addition to admin items like scheduling and billing. In these cases, checklists aren’t micromanagement; they are an essential part of making sure the job gets done correctly. One recommendation when introducing checklist workflows to your business is to let your employees know why you are doing it. Nobody wants to be a “robot”, so let your people know that you value their creativity and individual work effort, and that for projects like these checklists are a preferred tool for supporting them. If you can implement these workflows correctly, then you will create a business that is more efficient and successful.”

The best marketing checklists create a reliable handoff without removing judgment. Define the outcome, owner, due point, approval, and completion evidence. Keep creative decisions open where they should be open, and standardize the preventable mistakes.

What tools do organizations use for employee checklists?

The right tool depends on the risk, frequency, and coordination involved. A paper list or Google Sheet can work for a simple personal routine. Trello, Jira, Basecamp, and SharePoint can add ownership and project context. Purpose-built workflow software becomes more useful when the process repeats, crosses teams, requires approvals, or must produce an audit trail.

Zety’s team standardized on Jira because its software work already lived there. Their experience also shows the cost of forcing every department into one project tool:

“Our company uses Jira to manage our software projects. And being a tech-centric company, we have a lot of software projects to manage. To optimize cooperation between various teams, we decided to unify our tracking tools, and while the IT team is the largest one, the other teams must have conformed to their solution. And while at first the transition was painful to say the least, we really grew to like working with it. It’s surprisingly customizable and adaptable to the needs of many focuses outside of software development.”

Google Sheets remains flexible and collaborative, but Matthew Ross’s account captures the limitations that appear when a checklist needs assignments, scheduling, rich instructions, and repeatable execution:

“Your query caught my eye because we use Google Sheets to manage our workflow and checklists. Google Sheets works, but to be honest, there are some downsides to using it as a tool for small businesses. In short, the features are just a little basic for what we need. First, Google Sheets really don’t compare to using Microsoft Excel from a data analysis standpoint. It’s also difficult to assign certain projects or responsibilities to team members. It’s just not the most intuitive tool for delegating work. I also don’t like that you can’t easily integrate rich content and media. Lastly, it’s hard to schedule our tasks into the future. Like I said, Google Sheets work for what we need but it could be a lot more efficient.”

Spreadsheets can still complement a checklist. One agency respondent kept checklists in a shared drive while using Sheets for client-facing outreach data. The practical distinction is whether the file stores information or controls the work.

Project plans and employee checklists also solve different problems. A Gantt chart shows timing and dependencies across a project. A checklist protects the repeated actions inside each stage. Peter Mead at Bitcoin.com.au described combining both:

“We’ve used quite a few project management tools, and they’re great for complex projects such as software sprints. However, checklists are better for daily tasks which often repeat themselves. So, in addition to a project management tool (Basecamp), we use Idonethis for simple checklists. I’m really not a huge fan of micromanagement, so at the end of the day, I just check what everyone has done with their checklists. It’s much simpler than going to Basecamp and going through tasks every day.”

Andres Lares explained how Shapiro Negotiations used SharePoint to coordinate training logistics and a separate client checklist:

“In our business, it is very challenging to sync up and complete a multitude of tasks. It is like juggling a dozen balls at once. You’d have to keep your eye on all of them, and know when to catch each one. If you missed just one, this could spoil your whole performance. We use project checklists combined with Gantt charts to keep a methodical eye on the timings and process, with the Gantt charts adding a visual benchmark to see if we are on schedule, and if not – what tasks/areas need addressing. We’ve created templated spreadsheets for various departments, and with each iteration, we have managed to automate the daily tasks with customised alerts.”

Modern tools increasingly add AI-assisted drafting, summaries, and suggested tasks. Those features can speed up setup, but they do not replace process ownership. Someone still needs to decide which steps are mandatory, what evidence counts, who can approve an exception, and how the checklist changes when the work changes.

Choose the lightest tool that still provides the control the process needs. If people need assigned tasks, dynamic due dates, permissions, approvals, escalation, evidence, and a reliable history, move beyond a static document. The goal is not more software. It is a checklist people can follow and leaders can verify.

Best practices for building solid employee checklists

A strong employee checklist defines the result before listing the actions. Start with the trigger, such as a new hire signing an offer, a shift beginning, an email campaign reaching final review, or a safety incident being reported. Then define what complete means and which failures the checklist is meant to prevent.

Every reusable employee checklist should make six things clear:

• The task sequence, including which steps can happen in parallel and which must wait.
• The owner for each task, plus the role responsible when the individual changes.
• The due point, whether it is a fixed date or calculated from an earlier event.
• The instruction or decision rule needed to complete the task correctly.
• The completion evidence, such as a form response, file, signature, system record, or review note.
• The exception and approval path when the normal process cannot be followed.

Match the checklist method to the work. A read-do checklist guides someone through a sequence while they perform it. A do-confirm checklist lets an experienced operator complete the work, then verify the critical points before the process closes. New, complex, or high-risk work usually needs more guidance. Familiar work may only need a short final check.

Test the checklist with the people who will use it. Watch where they pause, skip, duplicate work, or need information from another system. Remove steps that add no control or learning value. Add detail only where it prevents a real failure. Review the checklist after incidents, policy changes, tool changes, and repeated exceptions so it stays connected to the way work is actually done.

  Regardless of the software or tools an organization uses, there are some best practices when it comes to creating and sustaining solid employee checklists. Solid employee checklists are ones that aren’t overloaded with information, don’t confuse users, and don’t detract from the task at hand. On the contrary – they help to quicken the process while simultaneously ensuring the task gets done as professionally as possible. Alongside the answers we were given by our participant pool, some also included tips, pointers, and best practices regarding how to create and sustain quality employee checklists! Raring to read what they have to say? We don’t blame you. The first piece of advice – which is coming from Sue Andrews, the HR & Business Consultant at KIS Finance – will help you incorporate checklists into your business’ culture:

“If staff see senior management adopting the use of checklists to organise their work they’ll be less resistant to their wider introduction. If the approach flows down from management and becomes part of the culture of the organisation, staff are more likely to buy into the idea that it’s part of the overall quality and management processes that the company has put in place, rather than a method of control.”

Once checklists become a part of your workplace culture, Agata Gruszka from ResumeLab – who we mentioned at the beginning of the post – has some advice for what checklists you should use daily, and which should be used on a more irregular basis:

“I really recommend using do-confirm checklists daily and for almost every task. This is especially true for sales, where output volume needs to be tracked constantly. Read-do checklists, on the other hand, should be minimized for everything sales-related: they slow down your outreach potential for processes which are usually relatively straightforward and short in length.”

Jason David at Software Portal has some unique insight regarding micromanagement – or rather, how not to micromanage with checklists:

“I find that checklists can, as any tool, be used properly or improperly. They tend to lend themselves to micromanaging if you are supplying checklists to employees. A checklist is best when it’s created by the person who will be checking off those items. I have my own checklist of initiatives and features that need to be completed by my team. But I simply give them the tasks. Then they will create their own checklist of the tasks they need to complete in order to meet the goal I’ve laid out before them. When you create a checklist for someone else they’re less likely to want to add things to it and, if you forgot something, it will remain forgotten.”

While on the subject of providing checklists to others, Model Teaching‘s Shayna has a few pointers, drawn from Model Teaching’s approach for creating checklists:

“When our company supports teachers in the classroom through our education consulting firms, we build out a personalized but standardized approach to support every teacher that we call strategic feedback. Each teacher receives a list of “action components” – that are specific, really narrowly focused evidence of great teaching we expect to see, based on their strengths and weaknesses in the classroom – we use this action component checklist to monitor improvement and to support them using a standardized process of observations and feedback. I think most schools have such a narrow approach to utilizing checklists because it can be time-consuming to initially set up; however it is incredibly effective”

Finally, the Break The Web team advocate for using checklists at the end of a process to double-check that everything’s A-OK:

“Checklists are usually the last stop in a given SOP procedure, tying everything together. As we get comfortable and complacent in a task, it’s effortless to miss something small. The checklists keep the priorities top of mind and ensure the work is delivered as best it can be. Let’s be real; we all can’t naturally be perfect all the time!”

On top of the answers mentioned here, we also received super-insightful comments from the likes of Brosix, Transformify, DanSoap LLC, and Walcraft Cabinetry, all of which informed us of their organization’s own checklist-related best practices! After reading through the above list of pointers and best practices, you’ve surely learned a thing or two about creating and sustaining employee checklists. However, there’s one more tip that should be added: Match the checklist to the work! Haven’t used – or heard of – Process Street before? My, are you in for a treat.  

Run employee checklists as governed workflows with Process Street

Process Street is a single Compliance Operations Platform with Docs and Ops capability areas plus built-in AI. Docs gives policies, procedures, and employee guidance a governed home. Ops turns that guidance into recurring workflow runs with assigned work, due dates, conditional paths, approvals, evidence, and an audit trail.

An employee checklist can start as a simple sequence, then enforce the controls the work actually needs. Stop tasks protect required order. Dynamic due dates calculate timing from a start date or earlier task. Task and role assignments route each step to the right person. Permissions limit sensitive information. Approvals create a clear decision point before work continues.

Built-in AI can help teams create and improve workflows, interpret information inside a run, and guide the next step within the controls the organization defines. The point is not to add a chatbot beside the checklist. It is to make the process easier to build, follow, inspect, and improve.

For onboarding, start with the employee onboarding template guide. Define every required task, owner, due point, instruction, completion record, exception route, and approval. Then test the workflow with the people who do the work. A checklist succeeds when it reduces uncertainty without turning into micromanagement.

The strongest employee checklists make the expected work clear, preserve room for judgment, and create proof that critical steps happened. Start with one recurring process where omissions are expensive. Build the smallest checklist that reliably prevents them, then improve it from real execution data.