If you’re struggling with unengaged employees or a large workload as a manager, you are most likely dealing with a lack of accountability within your team. Ultimately, creating accountability within your team has been linked to improved work performances and higher creativity and innovation.
-1.png?width=761&name=implementing%20propman%20(4)-1.png)
It is often assumed that creating accountability in teams is a conceptual task, but there are many practical things you can implement as a manager that will promote an accountable culture. Some of these ways might be through leadership actions but we will also show how you can use property management software to create accountability.
Our top tips for creating accountability
- Work towards the same goal
- Make taking responsibility easier
- Give more responsibility
- Create a culture of accountability
- Be patient
1. Work towards the same goal
A team working towards the same goal is one who will hold each other accountable. So, it’s really important to create and explain both long term and short term goals with your team so that everyone is aligned in priorities and responsibilities.
When you have your goals set and agreed across the business, it’s equally as important to continue to share with your teams where you are in relation to these goals. Strong financial reporting will be fundamental for your whole team to understand where you are succeeding and also what areas need work.
2. Make taking responsibility easier
Make responsibility the path of least resistance for your team by using specialised software to set up automated handovers and associated tasks. Workflows can be really useful in the first instance as you need to assign tasks to specific team members, but subsequently you will also be able to know when someone is not being accountable for said task.
Software that is specifically designed for property management is ideal for this, as you can ensure that the tasks are really specific to their job roles. For example, invoice and maintenance works approvals.
3. Give more responsibility
A fundamental way to encourage accountability is to give more responsibility to your team. Sign-off limits for teams can be a great starting point to ensure teams are self-sufficient and have a wider range of responsibility. Advanced accounting software, such as Propman easily allows users to have various purchase order sign-off limits, dictated by you.
As a manager who is used to working in a certain way, relinquishing control might seem daunting, but employees can’t become accountable without being self-sufficient.
4. Create a culture of accountability
Your team won't be accountable if they don’t see others in the business being accountable. It’s important for leaders to be transparent when things go right, but also when things go wrong and explain why this happened in order for others to feel like they can do the same. This could be the most important aspect to creating accountability as it will give your team the confidence that you are making this change as a team.
A good starting place for this is to create 360 feedback sessions within teams. This will create a framework for peer to peer feedback, where constructive feedback is encouraged. Lead by example and ask someone in your team to give you feedback within the framework and explain how you would take this feedback and action it within your role. It’s important here to ensure that your team explains how the issue they are discussing is affecting their role so that others become more aligned with each other.
5. Be patient
It will take a bit of time to create a culture of accountability in your team, but ensuring that you are consistently working on creating an environment that encourages peer to peer feedback and projecting yourself as an accountable leader will pay off.
If you want to learn more about property management specific workflows that will help to create accountability in your teams, you can read more here.