If you’re struggling to get your crew to show up to work on time, stay on schedule, and perform higher-quality work, taking steps to improve accountability can help. You can do this by putting these five easy steps into practice:
1. Set clear expectations
Accountability starts by clearly defining what success looks like on the job. Make sure your team knows from the start what you expect and how you plan to measure those expectations. Set clear goals, communicate them well, and communicate them often.
Schedule regular meetings to make sure your crew knows what they’re doing, how long they have to get it done, and what the job should look like when it’s done right. Combine regular meetings with detailed notes, lists, charts, photos, and diagrams, to ensure your crews know exactly what’s expected of them.
2. Continue training
If one of your team members does a job differently than how you expected, take the opportunity to continue training them. It’s possible they didn’t understand the directions or the difference between the way you wanted the job done and the way they did it. Trust they wanted to do a good job and explain the reasons why you want them to redo it or do it differently in the future. This will help your team provide consistent, high-quality work over the long haul.
3. Measure consistently
Measure performance to motivate your team and increase accountability by rewarding great work and identifying areas of improvement. Always use a consistent system to measure performance. For example, gantt charts can help you evaluate your team and keep everyone on track.
If crews are ahead of schedule, it might mean they rushed the job—inspect the work to make sure quality hasn’t suffered. If they’re behind, they could have run into challenges. Have a conversation with your crew to see if those challenges were within their control or outside of it. If the cause of the delay was within their control, use this as another training opportunity to cut down on it happening again. If they’re on schedule, it’s a good indicator they’re doing a good job. Take a look and reward them for a job well done.
4. Trust your team
Monitoring your crews’ work is important but over monitoring leads to micromanagement. Micromanagement breeds distrust, reduces your teams’ confidence, and stops them from wanting to take initiative. You know you’re micromanaging if you’re constantly checking up on your team, telling them exactly how to do the job (even the smallest steps), and asking for frequent updates. You have a team so you don’t have to do the work yourself. Make sure you’re empowering them to do the job correctly without you needing to be there.
5. Give and receive feedback
Feedback helps your team develop and mature, leading to higher levels of efficiency over time. Unfortunately, in a study by Culture Partners, 80% of respondents said they either get feedback when things go wrong or not at all. But feedback is important. It lets your team members know how they’re doing and where they stand. Likewise, when your team feels comfortable giving you feedback, you’ll be able to address issues sooner and help set them up for success. Make sure to create a work environment where your crews are just as comfortable giving feedback as they are receiving it.
ClockShark can help build trust and accountability with your team by keeping a record of clock in and out times and locations. You’ll never have to wonder where your team is again and you’ll both have a record to look back on if there’s ever a question about payroll or their location during the day. ClockShark can also save you money by shaving off hours of payroll time each month. Start a free 14-day trial to try it out and see how much you can save—no credit card required.
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