Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEMS

Organizational Problems: A Focus on Keeping Employees Accountable

Robert Guajardo

South Texas College

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A huge problem in an organization is accountability. Accountability is being responsible

for your work and having to explain your actions. Some workers feel like they can do whatever

they want because they are not getting in trouble or being told when enough work is not being

produced. Accountability is always a huge problem because the playing field isn't leveled.

You always have workers exceeding expectations, and those barely producing the bare

minimum. Today, micromanaging is frowned upon and workers hate when their leaders are

lurking and telling them what to do every minute. This creates a distrust between the manager

and the worker. It is a lose-lose situation because the worker wants the manager to leave them

alone, and the manager wants to make sure that work is getting done. An alternative to

micromanaging, is to have accountability from your workers. You want them to understand that

their work matters and why it is important. To track accountability across all workers without

watching their every move, is to have them keep a log with their daily tasks, and how much time

they are spending on that task. In the end, as a leader, you will review these and assess as

necessary. This method loosens the tension between the worker and the manager. As a manager,

you can continue your tasks without having to micro-manage, and as a worker, you can do your

work peacefully without someone watching your every move over your shoulder. Plato addresses

this quite well in his references to ethics. He emphasizes that people should morally do the right

thing and be happy about it.

Accountability in an organization is important because it keeps individuals in check. You

want them to know when they are performing at their best, and when they are performing at their

worst. First, you want to be held to the work you produce. This means that you will be able to

perform tasks at an individual level, but understand that the work you produce can have a

positive or negative impact on the outcome of your performance. It is important to understand

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that when taking on a big project, or deciding to ask for help can affect your accountability. If an

individual feels like they can take a project on hand by themselves, and succeed while

performing above than normal expectations, the accountability will be a positive outcome. It will

be a positive outcome because your managers will understand that you produced your work well,

and most likely will offer you more projects in the future. This can lead to career growth and

more responsibility, with less supervision. When you take on a project and don’t meet minimum

requirements produced, this can have a negative impact and can have vital consequences. Your

manger will have to keep an extra eye on you to make sure that you are growing in your career.

This will most likely frustrate the worker, but it is the managers responsibility to fully

communicate the expectations of the job and how to succeed in the career. Keeping a worker

accountable allows the department for individuals to focus on their strengths who are performing

well, and give extra attention to those that need it.

As a leader of an organization, a solution to keeping workers accountable for their actions

without having to micromanage is having workers fill out a productivity sheet. A productivity

sheet allows individuals to record what tasks they are doing, and how long they are doing these

tasks. One way this can be done is by creating an excel spread sheet. You then require the worker

to list a day per sheet, and have individuals record what task they are working on every 15

minutes. You can have the excel spreadsheet calculate and add up how much time of that day

was spent on that certain task. This can then be compared to other workers who are doing the

same task. If you see that an individual is spending a longer time focusing on a task, but

producing sub-par results compared to another individual who is spending less time on the same

task but exceeding results, there is a problem. The organization is wasting money on the

individual who cannot produce the task in a set time. The organization should then invest on
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another worker who can produce the task at an average time. This method should be fully

communicated to all workers and have them understand what the expectations are, and what will

happen if expectations are not met.

Creating a productivity sheet is the best solution, because you are comparing workers

against themselves. You are seeing who can produce the task at a set time, and who is producing

the best results. You can also find out averages per task across workers. Creating a line graph by

showing visual data, shows workers where they are compared to the average. If you explain to

the individual that they are producing the task with far more time compared to others, you may

need to have them be re-trained or seek improvement. These graphs comparing workers against

each other from the productivity sheet can also be advantageous when it comes to annual

reviews. You can pull out these graphs and show the worker why they got the review the way

they did. If they were exceptional at their daily tasks, then they would receive a positive review.

For those individuals who are producing less than expected tasks, they would be getting a

negative review. Productivity sheets also allow a manager to see where time is being spent across

the department. If you calculate altogether how much each worker is spending on that one task,

you can then create a pie chart of other tasks. If you do the productivity sheet for a month, results

would look like: task 1 is being spent 15% of the time, task 2 is being spent 45% of the time, task

3 is being spent 7% of the time etc. This will allow the manager to see where most time is being

spent and cut down on that time if necessary.

One downfall of having workers use productivity sheets, is that it takes a lot of time to

track how much time is being spent on a certain task. This can frustrate workers because they

don’t want to be recording what they are doing all the time. Another negative thing about

productivity sheets is it is creating a competition against workers. If you see a worker performing
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at an average level, and the worker is very competitive and wants to produce the best results in

the fastest time, this will push the worker to try harder and compete with the individual who is

performing the best and the fastest. It is important to keep these productivity sheets anonymous

because you don’t want there to be a lot of friction and you don’t want workers knowing who is

producing the best and fast results compared to their peers. Finally, the last negative thing about

productivity sheets is having workers not doing any other thing besides the tasks that are on their

productivity sheet and focusing on getting the task done in the fastest time. This can allow a

worker to not want to help others because it will affect their productivity.

The idea of accountability is a great idea and movement to one of the philosophers,

mainly Plato. If Plato was a leader of an organization, he would want people to morally and

ethically correct. For him, it is important to understand and want to explain to his workers why

this is being done and how it can help the organization out as a whole. Plato states, “treat

happiness in different ways as a state of perfection.” If the organization is not performing well, it

is not at a state of perfection. This can cause some workers to be unhappy because others are not

being accountable for their actions. Plato then goes on to explain that mistakes are due to

individuals not engaging properly with a class of entities that can be either equality, beauty, and

justice. In this instance, what is being affected is the equality and justice. Equality is being

tarnished because you have individuals who are doing all the work and not getting recognizing

for doing a good job, while others are performing sub-par, and not being addressed as to why

they cannot be performing at an exception rate like everyone else. With equality not being

available, this will cause a shift in justice. Justice is defined as peace, but there is none with this

because tensions will start to happen if issues are not being addressed properly. Plato allows
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himself and his thinking to act like a leader that will take accountability to the highest degree

with applying skills for further advancements of the organization.

As a leader, making your workers accountable for their actions in the workplace will

always be a problem. Requiring workers to fill out productivity sheets can easily fix this

problem. Productivity sheets allow a leader to get an inside look on what is going on in the daily

life of their workers. You can then see who is producing the best results in the fastest amount of

time, and who needs more help. Getting the right help to the workers who need it is important.

You want the worker to understand how to get better and grow in their career. Plato’s ideas are

important with this statement because justice and equality are being noticed at a level that the

leader will be able to see. The leader will then be able to be morally and ethically correct in

making decisions in regards to the future of the organization and delegating based on

accountability. If not achieved, then re-training, or finding an alternative way to do the same task

is needed. There are negative impacts with doing productivity sheets, but this is the golden

standard in keeping your workers accountable for what they do without having to micromanage.
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References

Dickson, G. (n.d.). Reframing Accountability in the Workplace. Retrieved from

https://blog.bonus.ly/reframing-accountability-in-the-workplace

Frede, D. (2017, December 06). Plato's Ethics: An Overview. Retrieved from

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics/

Meinwald, C. C. (2019, March 14). Plato. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Plato