Employee Accountability – Balancing Analytics And The Human Element

Recent data indicate a global dearth of employee accountability across both the private and public
sectors. A lack of employee accountability results in significant annual financial losses and delays in project completion. Failing to hold employees accountable can also result in greater staff turnover and a poor general work environment.

With great shifts on the remote-work front, managers around the world are coming to terms with
the fact that hours spent in-office do not automatically equate to productivity. They’re also now
having to define what ‘productivity’ looks like in the work-from-home setting.

As such, many employers are turning to technology like Monitask monitoring software as a way of
holding employees accountable and ensuring worker productivity for both remote and in-office
teams. Such software helps managers track and access key information about how and when
employees work – including clock-in times, task completion times, and app usage. By gathering this kind of data, managers can clearly identify cases where internal processes might be hindering
employee performance, versus cases where employees are clearly wasting time.

While accessing such quantitative data is vital for good management and keeping employees
accountable, it can only go so far. Managers also need to embrace the human element. For example, a manager won’t know from monitoring data that the reason for an employee logging fewer hours is because they’re sick unless they actually interact with that employee in person.

Monitoring data also cannot indicate whether or not a completed task is of a high quality, only that it took a certain number of hours to complete.

In order to promote employee accountability, managers must first and foremost know their
subordinates personally and assess individual output on the human level. From there, monitoring
software can be added to streamline admin processes like payroll, vacation days, and employee
rewards to further boost accountability.