What is accountability in the workplace
Accountability at work is about every person in the workforce – no matter their seniority - taking responsibility for their behaviour, decisions, and performance.
Accountable workers take ownership of their work duties, showing the initiative to meet deadlines and the expectations the organisation.
The best employers create a trusting environment where employees are not afraid to admit their mistakes and don’t hesitate to try and fix them.
Importance of accountability in the workplace
Creating a thriving culture of accountability in the workplace turns mediocre teams into high-performing ones and builds stronger trust and relationships.
Accountability is essential because it:
Accelerates performance
Accountability motivates employees to be more attentive to the smaller details of assignment and complete it to the highest standard.
Keeps everyone focused
When the distractions of the office and home make concentration a battle, there’s nothing better than a clear, fast-approaching deadline to bring people back on track and get the work completed.
Creates a proactive culture
Rather than waiting for good things to happen, accountable employees take the initiative to make the decisions that will adapt to change, solve problems and capitalise on new opportunities.
Easier to measure your progress
Goals, deadlines, and milestones are essential to the accountability toolkit, allowing everyone to see what success is, track how close you are to reaching your goals and allows you to keep track of the steps you must take before becoming stronger.
What are the benefits of accountability in the workplace
Better work relationships
Who wouldn’t want to work with people who take responsibility for their actions? Accountability builds mutual trust and respect and empowers people to build strong long-lasting relationships with others across an organisation.
Improves job satisfaction
Research shows that workers who believe that coworkers and managers are aware of their work have higher job satisfaction than workers who do not believe so.[1]
More effective teamwork
In top performing teams, colleagues immediately and respectfully confront each other when problems happen - not to point fingers but to collaborate on a solution. Research shows this improves innovation, trust, and productivity.[2]
Improved performance
Accountable employees are invested in the success of your projects and want to produce the best quality work possible. A quarter of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive from their manager helps them do their work better.[3]
Inspire individuals to exceed their goals
One study found that 76% of employees achieved their goals after writing down their goals, actions and providing weekly progress to a friend, 33% more than employees with no written goals or progress reporting.[4]
Greater profitability
Accountability engages everyone to exceed their goals and improve their performance. And Gallup shows that highly engaged workforces outperform competitors and result in 21% greater profitability.[5]
Improves productivity
Clearly defined instructions and set deadlines inform employees how they should prioritise tasks to ensure their energy is spent on the most important tasks.
Examples of accountability in the workplace
Acknowledge and fix your mistakes
It's easy to pass the blame on someone else, but accountability means accepting that you’re wrong or have made a mistake and taking the right actions – even if it means asking for help from others.
Showing initiative
Take a look at yourself, your team and work environment, and look for potential risks and processes that need to be improved to prevent it becoming a problem later.
Bring solutions to problems
During meetings or casual conversations, try to offer a solution, and even if you don’t have answers to the problem, be positive and get involved with others to bring a solution.
Improve your attendance
Show up to work on time (or even earlier if possible) and be ready to work. Not only does it set employees up to contribute well to meetings and projects, but it also shows respect for other people’s time.
Be receptive to learning
Accountable employees are coachable and seek out knowledge from others. Doesn’t matter if it’s from a manager, colleague or customer, listen.
Accepting feedback can help you focus on areas where you can improve and avoid future issues that could cause trouble for your career and possibly your personal life.
Follow workplace policies and procedures
Cutting corners matters in an accountable culture – yes, even if it’s just a little bit. Employees who ignore established procedures at work often lose the respect, credibility, and confidence of their colleagues, as rules of conduct are a bright reflection of a company’s ethics and values.
Being transparent
Never intentionally hide anything that can halt team members from completing their work or deceive colleagues in the work you’re doing.
Provide information about your activities and governance to your employees that is accurate, complete, and available in any convenient manner.
Speaking up, even when it hurts
Being accountable takes bravery and courage. Sometimes to create a better working environment or business result for everyone, employees will need to rise against everyone else and say something even if others don’t like to hear what you say. The worst thing that can happen is nobody speaking up and allowing certain situations to continue.
Six signs of a lack of accountability in the workplace?
Make no mistake – accountability is hard work and requires a tremendous amount of consistency and follow-through from the whole workforce.
Here are some telling signs of poor workplace accountability:
Missed deadlines
When missing deadlines becomes a habit for your team, it is a big sign that there is a lack of accountability and individuals are failing to meet expectations.
Even if the deadline is for a relatively minor task, the sloppiness can find itself present on larger projects and lead to significant damage.
This includes losing existing clients and customers due to poor service, as well as deflating the confidence, morale and engagement of the team and boss.
Broken promises
Promising to host next week’s meeting, then pulling out. Telling your manager that you’ll have completed that report by tomorrow morning, but you don’t deliver it. Promising your team, a pay rise, but it never materialises.
Just a few examples of the broken promises that research shows drain employees’ mental energy and leave them angry and disappointed. Studies suggest it can also trigger the affected to take out their anger on others. [6]
Expectations are unclear
Managers who flip flop between decisions, obscure job descriptions and the lack of a project brief create unclear expectations that confuse everyone.
Without clarity, individuals are unable to understand what’s required from them to complete tasks. It also leads to errors, hours of wasted time or duplication of work.
Micromanagement
Micromanagers avoid delegation and become overly involved in the work of their employees, preferring to stand over someone’s shoulder watching their every move or asking for updates every 15 minutes.
More than half of employees have experienced a micromanager at some point, and 68% of them said it decreased their morale and 55% said it hurt them productivity.[8]
Poor performance and quality of work
Sloppy typos on client presentation decks and inaccurate data included in financial reports are just two examples of the errors that pop up when accountability is lacking.
Without being addressed, these issues can snowball into major problems with the overall standards and quality of your work.
High employee turnover
Low employee engagement, bad morale, and other traits of a toxic working culture are drivers of people jumping for the exit.
Research shows that by creating a positive culture of accountability and engagement, you can reduce your turnover by up to 43%.[9]
How to increase accountability in the workplace?
1. Set the standard for accountability
When it comes to building a culture of accountability, change starts with you. Work on yourself before approaching an accountability conversation with co-workers or direct reports.
Write down the professional commitments that are important to your success, how you plan to uphold them, share them with your entire team and encourage everyone to hold you accountable.
2. Set clear expectations
Make sure everyone is clear on what’s required of them by:
- Defining project ownership: Work with your team to clearly define who owns what.
- Set out the project scope: Use one-page documents to specify the timeline, tasks that need to be completed and any examples.
3. Create SMART goals
SMART Goals are great when trying to increase accountability in the workplace, because it provide the clarity and focus needed to hit targets.
Make sure your goals are:
- Specific: A specific goal is one with a clear outcome.
- Measurable: When creating a goal, think about how you can track your progress and measure the outcome.
- Relevant: A relevant goal is one that adds value to the overall mission of the company or a larger project.
- Achievable: An achievable goal is one that is possible to succeed at, given the time and tools available.
- Time-bound: A time-bound goal is one that includes a completion date as part of the success criteria.
4. Link responsibilities to purpose
To increase accountability in the workplace help each employee understand how their work is impacting the whole organisation.
Professionals who can link their individual actions to that greater mission are more likely to feel an increased sense of purpose and responsibility.
A person who is filling out spreadsheets or sorting thousands of files can feel more commitment to the task if they know it will help delight a customer and help the company achieve its mission.
5. Provide regular feedback
It, in fact, has been seen that consistent feedback leads to 14.9% lower turnover in companies that implement the practice.
It’s particularly important to provide your employees with actionable and regular feedback – both positive and negative.
Feedback is a learning experience. Positive feedback will elevate their confidence and inspire them to do even better next time.
Negative feedback, on the other hand, will also help employees reflect on their mistakes and make amendments for the future.
Why accountability and trust are a perfect match in the hybrid workplace
Since the start of the pandemic, the way we work has transformed – hybrid working is the new normal. But how should leaders manage the performance of teams are split by location?
Behavioural science research shows the key to hybrid working success is combining high levels of trust and accountability to create psychological safety.
Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety is the most important trait in high-performing teams. When people believe that their employer is helping, rather than condemning them, when they make mistakes, it makes it easier for them to take responsibility for their actions.
And once psychological safety has been built up on a team, people feel safer taking risks, asking for feedback, and being vulnerable in front of each other at work. Research shows that this is critical for driving innovation, creativity and motivation.[10]
By giving people the autonomy to choose how and where they work, while providing regular opportunities for employees to share their progress, employers can harness the power of trust and accountability and accelerate team performance.
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References:
- Thoms, P., Dose, J. and Scott, K., 2002. Relationships between accountability, job satisfaction, and trust. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 13(3), pp.307-323.
- Grenny, J., 2022. The Best Teams Hold Themselves Accountable. Harvard Business Review.
- Gallup.com. 2022. 5 Ways to Promote Accountability.
- Traugott, J., 2014. Achieving your goals: An evidence-based approach. MSU Extension.
- Harter, J. and Mann, A., 2017. The Right Culture: Not Just About Employee Satisfaction. Gallup.com.
- Coyle-Shapiro, J. and Deng, H., 2018. Breaking promises is bad for business. LSE Management.
- Mercer, D., 2012. Staff lateness 'costs the economy £9 billion every year'. Independent.
- More Than Half of Employees Have Worked for a Micromanager, Accountemps, 2014
- Gallup.com. 2021. The Powerful Relationship Between Employee Engagement and Team Performance.
- Nowak, R., 2022. How psychological safety enables innovation: the effects on potential and realised absorptive capacity. International journal of innovation management, 26(01).
