How to Boost Your Employees’ Accountability

According to Gallup, employees who strongly agree that their manager holds them accountable for their performance are 2.5 times more likely to be engaged. But only 40% of employees out of those surveyed say their manager holds them accountable for their performance goals. This shows how organizations should improve performance evaluation to create better accountability in the workplace. Conducting formal progress reviews assures you that formal accountability conversations happen more frequently and closer to the performance time.

Accountability Definition

Accountability refers to engaged employees taking ownership of their work, meeting timelines, fulfilling the assigned tasks and responsibilities, and delivering high-quality output. Accountability is not just about completing assigned tasks but extends to being responsible for the consequences of one’s actions. You must further accountability amongst your employees to encourage transparency, trust, and a culture of responsibility.

How to Enhance Accountability in the Workplace

Setting clear expectations

is the first step to boosting accountability. You must clearly define your workforce’s roles, responsibilities, and performance expectations. Your employees should know their goals, targets, and timelines well. There won’t be any confusion and uncertainty when your people know what is expected of them.

Promoting open and honest communication

within teams helps a big deal in making your employees accountable. They must feel comfortable discussing their challenges, seeking help, and sharing their work progress. Managers can easily check this progress on the employee experience platform, enabling employees to make weekly check-ins. To further accountability in the workplace, communicate with your employees often, offer feedback, address their concerns, and be ready to support them.

Providing necessary resources

guarantees that your employees have access to the requisite tools and training to fulfill their responsibilities effectively. They won’t be accountable for the task if they lack knowledge or cannot access the necessary resources. Using the “Learn” feature of an employee experience platform, like UnlockTalent, you can enable your employees to take up courses and thus develop necessary skills, thus growing more accountable to their job.

Recognizing and rewarding

your employees for showing their workplace accountability helps make them more accountable. Make it a point to acknowledge the efforts of your people publicly. Your team members feel great when you praise them in a personalized manner with a badge, such as “Team Player” or “Rockstar”. You may plan to execute a reward system that offers incentives to your employees and rewards them for being accountable while performing excellently.

Boosting self-reflection

aids employees in mulling over how they have performed and thus taking responsibility for their actions. You can encourage self-reflection by conducting self-assessment exercises, frequent check-ins, and goal-setting activities. Using an employee experience tool, your employees can share challenges and roadblocks, if any. To learn how they can improve and how you can support them to achieve their goals aligned with the organization’s goals, you can get in touch with the experts.

Executing a feedback system

enables you to offer constructive feedback to your team members. Their accountability in the workplace automatically increases as they learn about their strengths and where to improve. In an employee engagement tool, you can see which of your team members have requested you for a 1-on-1 meeting and thus accept their request for feedback. Besides, your employees must be ready to share feedback for others. This way, there will be continual improvement while fostering a culture of accountability. and enhancing the employee experience, especially in a hybrid work model.

Leading by example

is another best means to make your workforce accountable for their work. Leaders should demonstrate accountability themselves. Own your actions and model the behavior you wish to see in your employees. Ensure managers are accountable for accomplishing their goals; their team members will be too.

Now that you have nurtured a responsible and productive work environment, your accountable workforce will portray the following qualities:

Qualities of an Accountable Workforce