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'Made It, but Nobody Reads It' — The Sad Reality of Work Manuals

Imamura here. In floor education at vertical farms, I keep encountering a particular situation: “I thought I taught them — but somehow it didn’t get through.”

The Method Is Different

One day while I was doing rounds at a vertical farm, a new hire came up to me with a question.

“The way to harvest lettuce — it’s different from how I learned it before.”

There was a hesitancy to it. Not angry — just genuinely puzzled.

Even for the same lettuce harvest, the method shifts subtly depending on who’s teaching. How you lift the leaves. The angle you bring the knife in. When you set it down on the work surface. Everyone doing the teaching thinks they’re just “doing it the usual way” — but from a new hire’s perspective, the rules seem to change every time.

I don’t think this is unique to vertical farms — it’s a common story in most workplaces. The person teaching thinks “I explained that before.” The person being taught thinks “but this is different from what I just learned.” Neither has bad intentions. And somehow that makes it more complicated, not less.

Training Tends to Become Wishful Thinking

After 10+ years supporting vertical farm operations and floor training, my conclusion has gotten fairly simple.

Most of the “education” companies provide is closer to wishful thinking.

That may sound harsh. But even when companies build elaborate training slide decks and thick manuals, the probability that what was taught actually takes hold on the floor is surprisingly low.

At one large vertical farm, a work manual that took three months to create had migrated to the back of a bookshelf within just two weeks of completion. A little early to be gathering dust. Even now as I write this, I can picture the file spines lined up neatly in the back of that shelf. Knowing the effort that went into making it, it’s hard to laugh.

Naturally, if you have a curriculum genuinely designed around the learner, that’s a different story. But how many companies today have the resources to invest properly in that kind of ideal training?

On the floor, roughly the same exchange keeps repeating itself.

“The new hires keep making the same mistakes. Give them proper training.”

“We don’t have time to train.”

I understand the manager’s side. I understand the floor leader’s side. When I’m standing there myself, I go quiet for a few seconds with my arms crossed. In my head: training, time, staff, deadlines, today’s shipment volume — all lined up at once. All important. All in short supply. So what do you do?

What most companies end up choosing is: “create a work procedure document.”

Honestly, when clients come to me asking to “fix the training situation,” I’ve suggested the same thing as a compromise — when there isn’t time for on-the-floor teaching, let’s at least create a work procedure document.

Standard Procedures Nobody Reads

But stepping back and looking at it honestly, the answer is clear.

Standard procedures don’t get read very much.

At one vertical farm I worked with, I checked the access logs on a carefully crafted 52-page work manual. The number of employees who had actually opened it: 23% of the total. Of all employees, the number who had read it through to the end: just 7%.

The moment I saw those numbers, I froze in front of the screen. 52 pages. Three months. 23% opened. 7% read to the end. The numbers just lined up in my head one by one, and for a while nothing came out.

And even if people do read it, the problems don’t stop there.

Say you write: “Lift the leaf slightly with your left hand and bring the knife in with your right.” How many people, just from reading that, can actually reproduce the hand movement and rhythm in practice?

This isn’t to say written manuals are useless. Documenting procedures, standardizing judgment criteria, preparing for audits — standard procedure documents have their role. But asking a document alone to carry the full weight of “actually being able to do it” on the floor is a lot to ask.

What Video Actually Communicated

There was a time when I couldn’t get new hire productivity to improve on leafy greens harvest, no matter what I tried. I’d explained it. There was a procedure document. I’d stood beside them and coached. Still, the hand movements were awkward.

So I tried something: I filmed an experienced worker’s hands for just three minutes on a smartphone and showed it to the new hire. No editing. No subtitle explanations. Just fast, practiced hands, uninterrupted.

The results showed up the next day.

The new hire’s work speed had increased by about 30%.

It was almost embarrassingly simple. The “speed” and “rhythm” that I’d failed to fully convey through all that writing — video absorbed it all in one pass. Standing next to the new hire watching, I went a little quiet myself. What was all that explaining for? I thought.

Particularly for tasks that require quick hands, video tends to communicate far more effectively than text. How you position your hands. The absence of hesitation. The timing of the transition to the next movement. These things thin out the moment you put them into words.

The benefits of video learning materials are straightforward:

1. All you need is a smartphone — you can start immediately
2. The “hard-to-articulate knack” of an experienced worker comes through
3. Repeated viewing makes it easier to internalize hand movement and work rhythm

Of course, for tasks that require complex judgment or theoretical understanding, video alone isn’t enough. Why you make a particular call, what you use as your reference point — text and in-person explanation are still necessary for that.

But for tasks where the goal is just to get the movement right first, video is remarkably effective.

In seedling transplanting work I’ve been involved with recently, we introduced a two-minute video. One week after introduction, new hire work efficiency had risen to 1.5 times what it was before. The “rhythm” that never came through no matter how many times people read the manual — it was absorbed naturally through the footage.

If you want to try this starting tomorrow, it isn’t complicated:

1. Find the person working most efficiently
2. Film them working for two to three minutes on a smartphone
3. Don’t edit it — just show it to new hires
4. Watch for the effect

Written manuals and video aren’t an either-or choice. Both are best. But if time and resources are limited, video is worth trying first.

Before you put that work procedure document together and file it away on the shelf, film an experienced worker’s hands for two minutes. Surprisingly often, that alone may be enough to shift what people consider “normal” on the floor.