Insights: Accountability

The gig economy is here to stay.   Intuit estimates that by 2020, as many as 40 percent of Americans will be contingent, or “gig” workers.  Gig workers can be freelancers, independent contractors, or any other outsourced employees who are hired on a per-project basis.
Some of these contingent workers choose to work outside of a payroll system either as full-time freelancers or as part-time workers who supplement their income by picking up gigs. Others take contingent jobs out of necessity even though they would prefer full-time employee status.

It seems like nowadays everybody is talking about accountability in the workplace and how critical it is to make sure things get done. There are so many conversations about how hard it is to implement accountability and how hard it is to change the culture of the business so that it becomes a permanent change.   

 
Whether working in an office with fewer than ten people, or a massive corporation with thousands of employees, we have all come across issues of how to hold individual team members accountable for their work.
As projects and teams get larger, more complicated, and less well-defined, it can be increasingly difficult to make sure that team members are staying on top of their own tasks so that the whole project stays on track.

Although CEOs often dictate company culture, and might sometimes even seem above the rules, recent research indicates that company structures are increasingly necessary to monitor upper-level executives and to hold them accountable for their behavior.
Putting practices and strategies in place to hold executives accountable to ethical requirements is necessary and can save corporations many headaches in the long run.

I’ve always believed that accountability is achieved when people feel a sense of belonging and personal pride of being part of a great organization, with great leaders, doing something worthwhile.  
Once employees truly buy into the meaning and mission of an organization, all they need is a road map of where the organization is headed, what needs to be done, and when it needs to be completed.  With this road map they can see how their work contributes to the overall success of the company.

Expanding the scope of a project is not a bad thing when properly managed.  in fact, changing requirements, constraints, needs, context, or priorities in a project is more norm than rarity.
But a problem arises when change creeps into a project unnoticed.  When project sponsors, project managers and team members realize that they are working on a bigger and more ambitious project than originally planned, and that they have begun to miss deadlines consistently and to exceed budgets, it’s probably too late.

As a partner, audit manager, or staff accountant in a large accounting firm doing external audits for large public and private companies, you may be wondering how to hold your client accountable for the components of the audit for which the client is responsible.

A recent survey found ISO 9001-certified organizations are 7% more profitable than those that are uncertified. 
85% of ISO certified organizations reported increased brand perception, increased demand for products and services, and higher market share.

A partner in a law firm has a lot to worry about. Business development, client relations, case management, and ensuring high quality work to mitigate the risk of malpractice leave little time for training and mentoring young associates.  

Most firms have more work than they can handle, and that work can’t be done without people. It is no secret that retaining associates is one of the biggest challenges facing law firms.  

As the manager of a project or of a special company initiative, have you ever been in the position of realizing that nobody is taking the program seriously?