Accountability at work simply means to take the ownership of the work that is assigned to any particular employee. The whole idea of accountability refers to the fact that every employee should perform in the best way possible for their business. An employee who has a sense of accountability will always take responsibility for his or her action and their result. They will never consider this as a sole responsibility of their management.
There is no doubt that employee accountability plays a crucial role in the efficiency and performance of the workplace. When employees are held accountable for absenteeism, lack of punctuality and their irresponsible behavior towards work, it ensures that employees are getting genuine chances to make up for their deficiencies. The practice of creating a culture of accountability complements the efforts of other disciplined employees.
A workplace with lack of accountability sends a message to the rest of the coworkers that lower standards are OK. Your workforce may begin to perform low and fail to meet their goals or company’s expectations. An excellent manager with leadership skill injects this sense of accountability into the DNA of each of his employees and drives excellent outcomes as a result. They know how to guide employees to manage workload according to team objectives, meet deadlines, achieve targets, keep commitments and take ownership of any error.
A team made up of accountable employees are high-performing individuals who perform efficiently to their day-to-day tasks to line up with overall business objectives. In an accountable work culture, there is no corner for favoritism or weakness. Rather mistakes and failures are precisely addressed and embraced, corrected to learning and growth. However, creating accountability is not simple. And it is especially harder when you manage a team of remote employees.
Wondering what does accountability means for remote workers? Accountability is equally essential for remote workers as it is for office employees. With a lack of face-to face communication, it becomes challenging for businesses to know how their employees are working when they are working from home. You have to start with ownership and let your employees understand the importance of taking the responsibility of their work. But the question is: How can businesses hold employees accountable when they can’t see them?
Here’s a very insightful article by Forbes on managing remote teams using Remote collaboration Software.
During the pandemic the number of remote employees have increased rapidly. Many businesses quickly switched to remote work mode in 2020. Now after a year, there are still a lot of employees who are working from home and preferring to continue this flexible working option for the long run. When the scenario is such it becomes important for businesses to establish policies where they can educate their employees with the sense of responsibility. Many managers are facing difficult times in terms of managing their remote employees, their productivity and job responsibility.
- Taking ownership of their work and performance.
- Keeping to their commitments about work.
- Completing projects before deadline hits.
- Delivering projects with the required output.
- Performing their roles and duties efficiently towards their organization.
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Why is it important to establish remote worker accountability?
- Helps build trust: When you are managing a team of remote employees, it is crucial that you build trust with your team members. As remote employees work from any part of the world, and you have never seen them physically, it will be extremely challenging to understand them. As team members are working from a distributed location, you should have an open line of communication with them for seamless team management. You can use tools that provide services like instant messaging, group calls and video conferencing for smooth communication. As your whole team is distributed, the chances are high that you will never have the scope to meet with them. Regular team interaction can help you know them better and also helps them to know you and more about the organization they work for. You can arrange a weekly team video meeting, where they can meet with each other and know more about their teammates. This will build trust with your teammates which will lead to workplace transparency and accountability to help them deliver their commitment efficiently.
- Increased Employee Engagement: Employee engagement is a crucial aspect that leads to higher productivity levels. A responsible employee will perform with their co-workers to create meaningful solutions and achieve desired results. You can easily identify employees who take the ownership of their task, they have few common traits which include:
- They come up with effective and innovative solutions.
- They continuously seek regular feedback. From their managers and coworkers.
- Take ownership of their assigned task.
- Works honestly and sincerely towards their given task.
Tips To Create Accountability Within Your Remote Employee
5 Essential Remote Work Tools that you need in 2022
List of Best Remote Work Software for 2022 for managing work online
1. Google Drive – for cloud storage and document collaboration
2. Zoom Video Conferencing
3. Slack – for real-time communication
4. CircleCare App- Employee wellness tool
CircleCare is a corporate wellness application that caters to both large and very small organizations. When it comes to remote employee health and wellbeing, the main goal of a wellness app is to promote health and fitness, which leads to increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and boosts operational efficiency. Employees can use the CircleCare wellbeing app to learn about and monitor their company’s wellness program, track daily progress, take part in challenges and get points for health events. Organizations must reconsider their notion of wellness and how they might improve the lives of their employees. Based on the employee’s input, the app shares them weekly plan and encourages employees to do physical exercise daily. Throughout each week, employees receive positive reinforcement and reminders to continue using the application which is an essential part of an overall workplace wellness program.
Bottom Line
There are many more software tools available for remote work that can keep your team efficient and productive, but using too many tools can make the work complicated. So you have to decide and pick the right tool to manage your remote team, the tools we have suggested covers the key solution which is proven to be helpful in managing remote teams efficiently.
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