Driving a Culture of Accountability with Transparent KPIs

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Making data available in the form of visualizations is only one part of the equation when it comes to improving business metrics. Teams may be able to see these business accountability metrics and even find them interesting, but do they know what to do with them? 

The next big step is to foster a culture of accountability in relation to key performance indicators (KPIs) that give workers clear goals that actually mesh with their responsibilities can create a sense of ownership. When these KPIs are a part of everyday work life, that ownership becomes part of the culture.  

At first, data dashboards can feel like a foreign entity to some employees. These dashboards can seem like they just provide some broad information about the business, and employees might still feel somewhat removed from that data. But, when employees feel a sense of ownership over KPIs, they are motivated to reach KPI goals and targets, get more creative, and work together to make positive changes. This shift toward a culture of accountability can emerge easily from a data-driven culture with access to the right tools. Ultimately, the right tools, combined with a culture of accountability brought on by those tools, leads to better business outcomes for the company.

Implementing Effective (and Lasting) KPI Usage

There are a few important elements involved in effectively incorporating KPIs into a work environment. The first is creating a KPI dashboard that can share data in a transparent way. This can be facilitated with help from a good software developer. The second is measuring the right KPIs that can drive performance–this depends on the role of the individual. 

And finally, a data-driven culture ensures that workers actually use the dashboards to measure performance and make decisions in a way that reflects positively on your business. Developing a data-driven culture can weave KPI usage into regular activities and decision-making in a way that really makes it stick.

Data Transparency in a Culture of Accountability

Transparency is key in a thriving culture of accountability. When employees have unclear directives or they can’t see how their responsibilities are tied to the big picture, they are less likely to take on accountability. Soon, they become disengaged and are more likely to burn out.

According to Slack’s Future of Work study, 80% of workers want to know more about how decisions are being made by their employers. So, employees do have the desire to be more involved in the company. Research also shows that the result of giving employees what they want in terms of transparency leads to good results. Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends report showed that 86% of business leaders surveyed agreed that the more transparent the organization is, the greater the workforce trust. Ultimately, employees that trust their company are more likely to go the extra mile to achieve shared goals.

Clearly defined KPIs can help foster this transparency in the workplace. When done correctly, this information is based on data analysis from the company’s own data. Ideally, this data can provide both role-based KPI dashboards and a big picture view of how the company is doing in a factual and straightforward way. When this information is available across departments, it can give employees a better understanding of how and why decisions are made in the company. 

But it’s also important to be proactive with this transparent data. In other words, encourage a data-driven culture by providing regular access to the same metrics across teams (while keeping role-based KPIs front and center), forge clear links between individual or team goals and company objectives, and provide relevant context. This might look like:

• Managers sharing their own KPIs and discussing how they contribute to the organization’s goals and decision making.
• Setting clear KPI goals that are achievable within a specified time period.
• Setting up KPI-focused meetings to go over goals, challenges, and strategies for improvement.
• Communicating the importance of KPI accountability and how it affects organizational goals and expectations.
• Sharing and celebrating KPI achievements across teams.
• Regularly discussing business accountability metrics and how the organization as a whole is meeting (or not meeting) its goals.

These steps also help create a more data-driven culture by showing workers how important data is in the decision making process. In turn, they can weave data into the way they make decisions and become more confident in doing so.

The Potential of a Role-Based KPI Data Dashboard

So, what do the right tools look like in the business world? 

Generally, good data visualizations compiled from real-time, relevant data are the tools and a data dashboard is the toolbox. Obviously, the type of tools will vary with the specific job. Just as a plumber's tools are not going to be very effective for someone working on an AC unit, a sales team will need tools that differ from those of a marketing team. 

In the same way, organizations need to think along the lines of role-based KPI dashboards that allow individuals to connect with data in a way that relates intimately to what they do. Role-based dashboards are tailored to an individual’s position and show KPIs that are directly affected by their duties. Ideally, employees should be able to see how their work impacts each KPI in a direct and transparent way. For example, a team in charge of operational efficiency might begin to diagnose the bottlenecks plaguing a given department or location and then implement new strategies there. Over a few months, they might watch the KPIs related to department/site efficiency begin to improve. 

These regular visual indicators of improvement give them a sense of accomplishment and pride in their work. This connection leads to ownership and accountability when combined with clear and achievable goals from management. 

Tips for Designing Effective KPI Dashboards

Driving accountability through KPI dashboards sounds great, but it might be confusing in practice. Finding the right KPIs for the right teams is paramount in creating this culture of accountability. While this will vary for different kinds of companies and teams, here are some general guidelines:

1. Avoid vanity metrics. Vanity metrics look good, but aren’t actually helpful. Often, they are downright misleading. If it can’t help you make a business decision or reproduce success in some way, it might be a vanity metric. For example, a running tally of a million total customers might look great, but if the customers per month has been trending down for years, this total number is misleading and useless. 

Some other common vanity metrics are web traffic, social likes, app downloads, and number of registered users.

• Focus on action-driving KPIs. These are essentially the opposite of vanity metrics. Instead of the number of total customers in the previous example, a useful and actionable KPI would be something like the trend of number of customers over time or the percentage of returning customers. These KPIs can provide insight on something that might need to be changed in order to grow your business. 

For example, if the returning customer percentage is low, you might want to reassess the customer experience and determine why they don’t come back.

• Keep targets, trends, and thresholds in the forefront. These KPIs tend to act as motivators and make goals clear and measurable. Targets set a clear goal to strive for and create a sense of accomplishment as dials inch closer to the final goal. Trends provide insight into previous work and show where to improve and what has worked. Thresholds help set a bar for what constitutes phenomenal, mediocre, and poor performance–creating more transparency around expectations.

• Use role-based dashboards, but allow for transparency across departments. Data analytics software, like Tableau, is highly customizable. You can create role-based dashboards so teams or individuals can focus on their own KPIs, but you can also allow for access to data across the organization. This can help create a culture of accountability, while also allowing for a transparent view of what is going on everywhere else.

• Find balance between transparency and surveillance. While workers do want transparency, they don’t want to feel like they are constantly being watched and judged. This kind of pressure just causes unnecessary anxiety.

There must be a balance between allowing performance between departments or individuals to be shared and making people feel like they are on display at all times. This balance can be something like sharing general performance metrics at a birds eye view without sharing every detail that takes place at a worker’s desk.

Streamlining the Shift to a Transparent Culture of Accountability

It’s easy to get excited about new and more effective ways of doing business. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy to get the ball rolling, especially when you already have a full schedule. At CSG, we are well aware of these difficulties. We specialize in working with businesses to unlock the potential of their own data in a streamlined and collaborative way. We have experience improving performance across multiple industries, from agriculture to healthcare.

Contact us today to get started creating effective dashboards and finding the right KPIs to shift your workforce into a culture of accountability, trust, and forward thinking.