Accountability

No matter what term your company uses, the process of accountability can often be a stressful and daunting task. Many people are by nature afraid of confrontation, so most avoid it. But avoiding confrontation is not a quality you want to exhibit as a leader.

This would seem to be obvious to most, but a surprisingly large number of leaders in the business world today are indeed afraid of confrontation. This can create a multitude of problems as one can imagine.

If you study today’s workplace, you will notice that a growing number of people in this country lose interest in their jobs as time goes by. It’s not a surprise that as the years go by, people become bored with their jobs and complacent. That’s just human nature.

Now the dangerous part of this is that some people, over time, try and get by doing the least amount of work they can without losing their job. And this downward spiral will continue, and their behavior will become less and less productive.

Unfortunately, some people will resist your efforts to restore their job performance more than others. Some will change if you just simply acknowledge their declining performance. Others may require a stern talking to, or a bad performance review. Others will change only if you write them up. A few will just simply not change, and you may be forced to terminate them.

The important thing to take home from all of this is to just take action. If you take no action, then there will be no improvement. And in today’s workplace, companies cannot continue to be successful and profitable with less than average employees.

This is where accountability comes in to play. You have to send a message that you will hold everyone accountable for their actions, or lack thereof. There has to be a general knowledge that if an employee doesn’t fulfill their responsibilities, then they will face reprimand.

Now this doesn’t mean that you should become a loose cannon and write everyone up. It just means that you have to follow a few simple steps:

-Hold meetings and communicate your expectations from everyone. Ask questions and make sure everyone understands. You may even want to have them sign a copy of the topics that you cover as documentation in case they claim to have no knowledge of what was expected of them.

-Communicate your expectations daily. Observe your employees work and study the numbers and the paperwork. Let them know that you are following up on them.

-Finally, after you are comfortable knowing that everyone is aware and trained on your expectations, you start making moves. By now a great number of employees are doing as they should since the good ones are going to do what is necessary to get the job done. Now you can start dealing with the ones that still don’t take you seriously.

And there will be some that don’t take you seriously. By giving them reprimand, you are effectively taking action that is backing up your words. This will oftentimes help to change the associate’s behavior, and sometimes others that see that you mean business.

Unfortunately, sometimes there are people who will not respond even after action has been taken. These are typically disgruntled employees who just cannot be saved. But in terminating them you are doing everyone a favor. Some people are just afraid to make a life change as big as quitting their job.

I have terminated quite a lot of people over the years. Some have continued to dislike me because of it. Some have moved on to bigger and better things and thank me for my actions, as it was a veritable wake up call for them.

The biggest impact you will receive from taking this course of action is that your remaining employees will often respect you more. No one hates anything at work more than a disgruntled employee who brings everyone down and spreads negativity. It is much like a disease that spread through the workplace, crippling your efforts to move up the ladder. Making yourself and your associates accountable for all actions and non actions is the key to solving this type of workplace problem.