Is your company brimming with people who are energised around a goal, who own their roles and will move mountains to make the business successful? When people are accountable for their own performance it not only makes their work meaningful, it also drives productivity and adds to the bottom line.
So what’s the secret? How can you set a tone of accountability in your business?
According to Heather Mostert, a Co-Founder and Director at Airshot, the first step is to change your employee’s behaviour. “As a leader, you need to take ownership of the behavioural economics in your business. You need to ensure the behaviour of each individual is driving the economics of your business forward,” Heather explains.
This starts with elevating accountability from a buzzword to a business philosophy. Various studies have shown that accountability has a clear correlation with heightened capability and increased dedication to the role. “Developing a culture of accountability will give your team the autonomy and ownership they need to truly thrive,” Heather adds.
Here are Heather’s top five secrets for making accountability part of your business DNA:
1. Make Work Meaningful
Explain your business objectives and then explain them again. When your employees truly and deeply understand the business goals and the part they play in achieving them, the shift in their behaviour will surprise you. They will actively improve not only their own performance but the overall performance of the business too. So use tools to continuously remind your people about the goals. Using Airshot, our client’s have found that the people who interact regularly with the messaging are also the company’s top performers, so find mechanisms to encourage your employee engagement and feedback.
2. Be a Show Business
As the CEO, a Director or even a Team Leader, your actions are closely monitored by your employees and how you show up will influence your team’s behaviour. If you are often late for work or for meetings, your people will do the same. If you want to make accountability part of your business, your leadership team has to walk the talk – the right behaviour starts with you so you have to be accountable for your actions. Be a “show” business, not just a “tell” business.
3. Align Actions and Results
It’s easy for employees to assume that the team goal is the responsibility of the project leader. Change this behaviour by ensuring they understand how their individual contributions directly impact the key results. When you have their buy-in, accountability will flourish – so include your team in setting goals and ask for their input in what’s realistic and what’s not. And once the goal is set, get each person to provide and commit to a clear outline of the actions they will deliver to achieve the goal.
4. Highlight key metrics
Use communication tools to share daily or weekly metrics. Our clients use Airshot to report on the performance of each employee in the form of leaderboards. A great way to encourage accountability, these drive healthy competition too! And with the metrics readily available to everyone, it’s an effective tool to clear roadblocks and adjust expectations too. It also gives them the opportunity to recognise their employees for accomplishing goals and as well as acknowledging those who didn’t achieve their targets this time around, motivating them to try harder next time.
5. Create Open Communication
And lastly, keep the feedback loop open. Open communication and a mutual exchange of ideas gives everyone in the company a voice cultivating trust and respect, collaboration and transparency. By creating a high-trust environment where employee input is valued and used, your people will try harder, stay accountable and have the confidence to fix any issues with the help of their team.
Giving your workforce accountability will have a positive impact on their performance. It’s just that simple: create a team where everyone takes accountability for what matters most and your organisation will flourish.
