Sharing Accountability with SaaS
Helen Back- HR Manager
It's great when staff take accountability and follow procedures properly, but when you have a member of the team who is so focused on their interpretation of certain rules and guidelines, such as new GDPR measures, it stops everyone else being able to get on with their work without the fear of a solid disciplining. Over the top colleagues can be a total log-jam to team productivity and the sharing of important information.
Self-Appointed Gatekeepers- Taking you to hell and back.
In normal workplace situations, it's more common for people to avoid taking accountability, because it's usually code for getting a good roasting. On the flip side, with information management, some people can hoard accountability and resist sharing it because they fear others will make mistakes or unknowingly breach confidentiality, which has serious consequences on the business. In these situations, members of the team become a self-appointed gatekeeper of information to protect it from their fear of misuse.
The implementation of GDPR legislation saw the rise of a whole new era of accountability, that for the most part has been a step in the right direction for business security and compliance. However, it also breathed life into who believe only a select few can be trusted to interpret the rules correctly, and anyone they don't trust will simply abuse the information.
While they may believe they are saving the business from the casual incompetence of their colleagues, in reality, a self appointed gatekeeper that refuses to share accountability and information, is doing untold damage to your business.
Some of the biggest risks to effective business process management of having a team member gatekeeping information are:
- Huge backlogs of work where they have inserted themselves into every process to ensure it's carried out to their standards
- Colleagues lacking confidence that they are able to do things without this gatekeepers approval
- Staff holding off on suggesting ideas because the accompanying level of scrutiny doesn't feel worthwhile
- The biggest risk is that staff will find ways of sharing the information completely outside of normal business procedures, just to avoid engaging with this gatekeeper at all. This creates much bigger problems for accountability and the correct flow of information than if the gatekeeper wasn't part of the process at all.
Get the best of both worlds
If a company takes steps to demonstrate to their operatives the collective benefits of sharing accountability and implemented simple tools that automate the security and compliance elements, then it means vital information can flow through the company freely, uniting workflows and giving huge efficiency gains. People tend to look for the path of least resistance in their tasks, so if you give them that path with your own checks and processes running in the background, everyone wins.
With accountability in place, it's time to burst Helen's bubble!
