02/ 06/ 2008
by Tamara E. Holmes
If your small business employs more than one person, you depend on teamwork to get the job done. In fact, if one person doesn't pull his or her share of the weight, the entire team could fail. For that reason, it is imperative that employees be held accountable for their actions. Here are ways to make sure that accountability comes from the very top.
Be clear about expectations. Employees cannot be held accountable for their actions if they are uncertain of what actions are expected of them. When hiring new employees, make sure training is specific and expectations are written down. When relaying tasks to employees, give deadlines so it's easy to see if the task was actually completed on time.
Create a benchmark. If employees know exactly what is expected of them, they have a concrete goal to work toward. If an employee is a salesperson, consider giving her a minimum of sales to close a month. If an employee writes reports, give him a number of reports he's expected to generate each week. The idea isn't to micromanage your employees, but rather to give concrete guidelines to help them achieve your expectations.
Come up with the consequences. What happens when employees perform as expected? What happens when they don't? At the heart of any system of accountability is a set of consequences. Just as a parent determines the amount of his or her child's allowance or the scope of the child's punishments, it's up to you as a small-business owner to figure out how to reward employees for following through and how to reprimand them when they don't. However, note that if you reward employees with something that's not desirable, they're not likely to care whether they get it or not. Likewise if the punishment isn't something that's going to cause a little bit of pain or disappointment, employees won't feel inclined to work hard in order to avoid it.
Share the consequences. Don't wait until after an employee has failed to perform as expected to tell him or her the consequences. Rather, employees should know beforehand how their careers will benefit from their ability to follow through, just as they should know how dropping the ball will ultimately hurt them. Consider holding a meeting with employees to discuss the priority being placed on certain tasks and goals and outline the consequences of employees not getting the job done.
Highlight successes. Praise is a big motivator. When employees achieve goals, publicly applaud their efforts. Once they know you appreciate the work that they do, they're likely to continue to work hard, while other employees are reminded of the type of performance that's expected of them. An 'Employee of the Month' designation is another way to motivate employees to work harder since it may appeal to their competitive sides.
Keep your word. Once you outline the consequences to employees for achieving or missing company goals, you have to follow through. If you don't, employees won't take you seriously and they'll get the message that accountability is not important in your organization. For example, if you stress to employees that achieving certain results will factor heavily on their next performance review, yet they don't get a raise even after they performed way above expectations, they won't see the value in working hard for you. Likewise, if nothing happens when employees fail to do their jobs correctly, they may continue to under perform.
