Health & Medical
Culture of accountability
How to hold employees accountable to their roles
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business Pittsburgh | January 2009
Page 1 of 2
Arnie Burchianti founder and CEO, Celtic Healthcare Inc.
To Arnie Burchianti, culture
and success are as intertwined as a Celtic knot.
“There’s a direct [link] between
the health of your organization’s
values and culture to your
growth and to your long-term
viability,” says the founder and
CEO of Celtic Healthcare Inc.,
which takes its name from the
intricate symbol.
Burchianti builds that culture
by measuring his 600 employees against core values, such
as accountability, teamwork
and mutual respect. Doing this
has allowed the home health
care provider to grow to 2007
revenue of $31.4 million from
$5 million in 2005.
Smart Business spoke with
Burchianti about how to hold
your employees accountable by
setting clear expectations and
offering simple rewards.
Q. How do you hold
employees accountable?
It starts at the hiring process.
We only hire people who are
self-motivated and hold themselves accountable.
Anyone who’s coming in is
asked to do an online personality profile. It helps you get
through the b.s. of the interview
and understand what motivates
the person. You can see
whether the person has the
behavioral styles to be accountable to the responsibilities.
We ask open-ended questions
like, ‘If you were in this situation
and here were the terms, what
would you do?’ We’re trying to
reproduce what we know this
job is going to require. You’re
asking questions that will put
them in a work environment
and seeing how they’re going to
respond.
Q. How do you hold
employees accountable
without micromanaging them?
Managers micromanage
because the roles and responsibilities are not clear enough for
the employee. If we bring the
right people in understanding
the roles, then we don’t need to
micromanage them.
When you hire employees, you
have to have well-documented,
clearly defined roles and responsibilities. You’ll hear people say,
‘Here’s your job description, but
you’ll be doing more than that.’
That’s like saying, ‘You’re
going to join the football
team, but you’re going to
use a golf club, too.’
Revise your job descriptions as frequently as you
[change] the responsibilities. Once the description
is clear, then you don’t
need to micromanage. You
say, ‘This is due on every
Tuesday of every week. If
there’s a disaster, let us
know. Otherwise, you’re
going to be held accountable to do this weekly.’
If you give them a crappy
job description, then say,
‘You’re not doing your job,’
they’re going to look at you
like you’re nuts. People will
lose trust in you if you’re holding
them accountable to things that
you’re not telling them about.
