Accountability Training and It's Value for Business Progression

Accountability Training August 18, 2020

Mary Kate Morrow

Writer

Introduction

Accountability training includes helping employees with both their personal accountability and holding others accountable in the workplace.

How to Introduce Accountability in Your Training Program

Accountability training is a crucial business best practice technique that should be a training topic top priority. Human resource departments must establish accountability training to combat the 50% of employees who report they dislike accountability as a best practice due to difficulties executing it.

Business owners should make sure that they understand and define what accountability means for their workforce. Owners and leadership management professionals should work directly with their human resource department on crafting accountability training for their unique business needs.

How to Introduce Accountability in Your Training Program

Introducing accountability as a training topic into a current training course requires planning and effort. Perhaps your company decides to change management and needs to develop a new leadership management employee accountability course or you are adding an accountability training topic module to your existing training course material.

Make sure to provide human resource professionals with a clear expectation of what accountability training objectives your business wants to achieve. Tips on implementing accountability training into your training program include-

1. Establish best practice objectives- When developing an in-person or online training program make sure that you summarize business key results as efficiently as possible. Effective accountability training is not possible unless you develop a clear expectation for what objectives your business needs and wants to achieve.

For example, if you have hundreds of key result objectives listed in your training course material, your training program may be too complicated for employees to focus on. When establishing best practice objectives, always make sure to keep it as simple as possible. Some companies find that their many dozen objectives can be summarized into just a few broad objectives.

Employees can remember 3-4 key results much easier than many dozens of different key results. Once there is a clear expectation established, each team member can be responsible for not only their personal accountability but better hold others accountable in the workplace.

2. Empower each team member to hold others accountable appropriately- 81% of employees report an inability to follow through with commitments as the top issue of their coworkers. Employee engagement is severely impacted when employees do not feel appropriately trained to hold others accountable for work.

Especially in a highly collaborative environment, each team member should be trained on how to appropriately address low employee engagement employees. When a team member consistently lacks personal accountability your entire company culture is at risk of becoming dissatisfied and disengaged.

Empower leadership management employees, human resource professionals, and every applicable team member by developing decision making and problem solving skills. Well trained and confident employees are more likely to have high employee engagement and personal accountability levels.

To further address this, leadership management training must make sure to focus on performance management best practice techniques. Managers who do not hold every employee accountable will decrease company culture accountability overall. Leadership management professionals should provide a direct example to their employees on holding others accountable appropriately and effectively.

Accountability performance management is essential for every team member but is especially important for leadership management employees to understand. If managers cannot improve their accountability skills you may need to change management professionals. Fortunately, there are many accountability online course and training program modules available.

3. Welcome giving and receiving employee feedback- Only 20% of employees actively seek and give feedback in the workplace. Unfortunately, employee feedback has a very negative and punitive connotation. Instead of viewing feedback as a strictly negative event to avoid, feedback should be framed as an opportunity for growth and development.

During any leadership management training program teach every team member to be assertive and appropriate with feedback. Make sure to stress welcoming receiving feedback from employees as well as providing it.

Your human resource department should be provided online training or attend an in-person training course that stresses the role of feedback in performance management best practice techniques. Make sure to give positive feedback more often than negative feedback and always provide a clear expectation about what you expect from team member performance.

4. Encourage employees to take appropriate risks- Only 20% of employees value risktaking in the workplace as a strength. Innovation is often a result of risktaking and your employees should feel comfortable taking some risks on the job in order to improve existing best practice protocols.

Risktaking promotes personal accountability by allowing employees to be proud of what they produce and introspective when their efforts do not result in their original planned objectives. Team member decision making and problem solving skills are also improved through appropriate risktaking.

Of course, it is essential to make sure your employees understand which risks are appropriate. Taking risks with customer service protocol may not be advisable for a team member who has not received proper customer service training. Risktaking should always improve best practice techniques, not harm them.

Make sure your human resource department sets a clear expectation for what types of risktaking are appropriate for the workplace. Additionally, make sure each team member takes responsibility for both personal accountability and holding others accountable for their risktaking.