A recent Deloitte study revealed that 43% of millennials plan to leave their current job within two years. High rates of turnover, combined with the rise of the “gig economy” — in which individuals can volunteer to fulfill remote, part-time, or one-task jobs (fueled by freelance giants like Postmates, Upwork, and Lyft) — have completely reshaped the modern marketplace.
These structural shifts, while providing welcome economic growth across industries, have introduced a new set of challenges for workers. Among these hurdles is the lack of professional development afforded by frequent job-hopping or part-time freelancing. At the same time, employers may struggle to effectively develop their leadership teams and scale their businesses in the face of declining employee retention rates.
Achieving sustained organizational growth in the face of these challenges requires clear vision and leadership, agility, and a commitment to creativity and innovation. How can businesses position themselves and their employees for sustained growth while ensuring they consistently hit benchmark targets and maintain a competitive foothold in their industries by delivering solutions at speed?
Why Workplace Accountability is the Key to Growth
Most critically, supporting both professional development and organizational growth requires a highly accountable workforce — which hinges on an understanding of the difference between accountability vs. responsibility. Responsibility connotes a duty that someone fulfills because they must, while accountability is an autonomous and affirmative decision to overcome one’s circumstances in order to take full personal ownership for delivering on desired results.
Achieving both personal and team or organization-wide accountability requires the same steps: identifying and understanding what is creating the gap between desired results and actual results; taking ownership for the connection between one’s actions and the desired results; practicing creative problem-solving to generate effective solutions to bridge this gap; and delivering on promises to achieve desired results.
Whether applied to one’s individual professional goals or to organization-wide results, if one of these four steps (See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It) is not completed effectively, progress toward growth will falter.
For example, if your team is six months behind schedule on a major project, this may be an indication that the team is failing on at least one of these steps to accountability. Perhaps the team is not actively working to pinpoint the causes behind their inefficiencies, or maybe they are failing to take psychological ownership for creating solutions to get the project back on track. Only by recognizing these deficits and aligning team members around shared objectives can the team take true accountability and deliver the results it needs to succeed.
How the Workplace Accountability Index Creates Higher Growth Potential
When leaders understand the vital importance of individual, team, and organizational growth in promoting their speed to market, ability to change, and competitive edge in the marketplace, they will naturally want to invest in growth on every level.
The first and most crucial step in promoting growth within your organization is gaining insight into current levels of accountability across the company. The new Partners in Leadership Workplace Accountability Index is designed to provide leaders with a tool to quantify rates of accountability for individual teams. These rates are determined according to key indicators that correlate to the four steps to accountability — including feedback-seeking, psychological ownership, creative problem-solving, and effective implementation of solutions.
Equipped with a full picture of accountability within their organization, leaders are able to tackle accountability problems head-on and maximize their organizational growth potential — strategically positioning their businesses for long-term success.
Learn more about how the Workplace Accountability Index can boost your rate of growth and help you consistently hit topline results.
