How to make accountability a core part of your workplace culture

What does accountability mean in the workplace?

Accountability in the workplace means that all employees are responsible for their actions, behaviors, performance and decisions. It’s also linked to an increase in commitment to work and employee morale, which leads to higher performance.

It’s recognizing that other team members and general company performance depend on the results of your work. When employees are held accountable, they take responsibility for results and don’t assume it’s someone else’s job.

Essentially, it’s the opposite of passing the buck.

The directly responsible individual

The concept of the directly responsible individual (DRI), coined by Apple, is the perfect example of accountability at work. Everything at Apple, big or small, is assigned to someone who’s directly responsible for it.

DRIs are held accountable for the success and failure of the projects they’re assigned to. By explicitly assigning responsibility, there’s less room for passing blame, and more clarity over who’s making decisions. 

Ultimately, when team members consistently demonstrate ownership and accountability, trust is formed. This results in less micromanaging and higher performance.

What happens when there’s a lack of accountability at work?

To put it simply: A lack of accountability damages the team.

When people aren’t accountable, one person’s delay becomes the team’s delay. One shortfall snowballs into bigger shortfalls.

When missed deadlines, lack of punctuality, and unfinished work are tolerated, they have the tendency to become the norm. People learn that the real deadline is a week from the published one; that consistently being 10 minutes late for a meeting is okay; that sub-par work is acceptable. Your team suffers, and ultimately your workplace culture suffers too.

Having a member of the team that isn’t meeting their commitments and isn’t being held accountable causes frustration and disengagement with the rest of the team.

According to Partners In Leadership, a lack of accountability in the workplace leads to: 

• Low team morale
• Unclear priorities across the team
• Decreased employee engagement
• Unmet team and individual goals
• Low levels of trust
• High turnover

Yikes!

Once you understand your goals and expectations, you can bridge the gap between what you’re actually doing and what you’re supposed to be doing. Is there an abyss where things are getting lost because you didn’t realize they fell on your plate? 

Lastly, and most importantly, take responsibility for your actions. When you acknowledge you’ve made a mistake, you’re also recognizing you have the power to fix that mistake. And that’s the beauty of accountability.

Examples of demonstrating your own accountability in the workplace:

• Complete tasks that have been assigned to you by the timeline you agreed on.
• Be responsible for the success of your team and make the effort to support your team when needed. 
• When you schedule meetings, respect everyone else’s time by showing up prepared and on time (and expect that others do too).
• Take ownership over the problems you flag by coming to the table with solutions too.
• Don’t sweep problems under the rug or assume the issue’s already being dealt with. Instead, flag issues as they arise.

How to make accountability a core part of your culture and a core value of your team

We resist holding others accountable because we’re uncomfortable doing it, we forget to do it or maybe we don’t even know how to go about it. Here’s how to tackle these issues to create a culture of accountability in the workplace.

1. Lead by example and hold yourself accountable first

Like we mentioned earlier, as a manager, you’re the pacesetter of tone, performance, and culture for your team. People will follow your lead. If you’re continuously showing up to meetings late, pushing deadlines, and not owning up to your mistakes, the team will follow suit. 

2. Set team goals

Setting goals is an essential part of creating a culture of accountability on your team. It helps establish what you’re trying to achieve together.

But it’s important to remember not all goals are made equal. To set goals that encourage accountability, they need to be measurable, clear and challenging. Our favorite way to set goals is through the OKR framework (objective and key results). The beauty of OKRs is that they’re not top-down. You create them together as a team and they’re easily trackable. Plus, they should ladder up to larger company goals so everyone know their impact on the bigger picture.

This makes it easier for everyone to understand their roles and what’s expected on both an individual and team level. 

3. Work on your feedback skills

Giving tough feedback isn’t easy, but it’s a skill that can be improved. One of the most important things you do as a manager is to provide feedback. When you regularly give feedback (including positive feedback), it makes tough feedback much easier to give. It also reduces the chance of your direct report being surprised by the feedback they’re receiving, leading to further disengagement.

4. Create a culture of two-way feedback

Good feedback isn’t only about the ability to give it, it’s also about being open to receiving it and providing a space to do so. When you don’t foster a culture of two-way feedback, and your team members don’t feel like there’s a safe space to speak up, they start to disengage.

5. Make accountability a habit

Setting up a reminder to give and solicit feedback as part of each meeting agenda will help ensure that feedback flows consistently. We believe one-on-ones and team meetings are great opportunities to build a habit around accountability.

Here are a few of the meeting questions that managers using Spinach AI add to their one-on-one agendas to make accountability a habit:

• Is there anything we should START doing as a team?
• Would you like more or less direction from me on your work?
• Do you feel you’re getting enough feedback on your work? If not, where would you like more feedback?
• Is there an aspect of your job where you would like more help or coaching?
• How could we improve the ways our team works together?

6. Keep track of your commitments and hold each other accountable

If you make a promise to provide more feedback to your direct reports, make sure you add that as a future agenda item to hold yourself accountable. If your employee commits to providing a work back schedule for a project by a certain date, make sure you have a way to check-in on that day.

One easy way to foster a culture of accountability – or, if the damage has already been done, address a lack of accountability – is to make sure you’re assigning action items during meetings.

7. Use an accountability framework

A lack of accountability is rarely intentional. Often, it’s a result of other problems — one being unclear roles and responsibilities. 

When there’s a lack of clarity around who’s responsible for what, it makes accountability nearly impossible. In fact, a Gallup study found that only 50% of employees strongly indicate that they know what’s expected of them at work.