What is the Value of Accountability?

Why value accountability? Research conducted among American non-management workers has yielded some interesting facts:

1. Less than one in four workers say that they work at their full potential.

2. One-half say they work only hard enough to hold on to their jobs.

3. Three in four say they can be significantly more effective on the job.

How can this be? America is one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet. But the answer to this apparent dilemma has less to do with how modern and up-to-date methods and processes are, and more to do with the quality of leadership. Ask yourself how well you and other managers in your organization have tapped into the full potential of your employees. If the answer is “not very much” and you value accountability, then you may want to examine your own management style.

The effort to examine your style and change it could be well worth the effort it will take. Firms with high levels of accountability enjoy much higher levels of profitability than those that are not accountable.

First, the relation of value to accountability has not been researched and documented. However, employee engagement (which includes and is closely related to accountability) has been studied extensively.

In some ways you could argue that employee accountability and employee engagement are like twins of the same parent issues.

An engaged employee is defined by all the firms that work in this area as an individual who is committed to and believes in the value of the company, feels pride in working for their employer, is accountable for results, and is motivated to go the extra mile.

A 2006 study by ISR found a nearly 52% gap in the one year improvement of financial measures between companies with highly engaged employees and companies with low levels of engagement.

High engagement companies saw a 19.2 per cent improvement while low engagement companies declined 32.7 per cent in operating income over the same period. The study results, gathered from surveys conducted around the world from 664,000 employees over a 12 month period, measured operating results including operating income, net income and earnings per share (EPS). Net income growth over the one year period was 13.2 percent for highly engaged companies compared to a 3.8% decline for low engagement companies.

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