Community Accountability — Tip of the Week

Yesterday, I heard a sermon that caused me to change this week’s tip. The sermon reminded me of a subject discussed previously on this blog. More important, it dealt with a concept that the leaders of every employer, particularly those in human resources, need to consider and impart to employees in every workplace.

The sermon was, in part, about corporate or community responsibility or accountability. This principle is firmly embedded in biblical Jewish tradition. It also raises its head in the New Testament’s last book, Revelation. Unlike the American standard of individualism, when something wrong happened to the ancient Jewish community, everyone in the community shared in the blame. Now, we’re concerned about individual blame. Then, it was everybody’s fault.

As noted in a recent post, the acceptance of individual blame is all but gone, even in the individualistic USA. So, it’s highly unlikely that many of us will be eager to embrace community blame. But just as an employer’s success is always the result of the work of a team, it’s failure is usually hard to pin on one employee. Other workers may have actually been involved. The blamed employee may not have been properly trained. The mistake may have been committed numerous times in the past, with the concomitant risk known each time, but it wasn’t until this last commission that the consequences were finally felt.

There are, of course, times when a mistake is glaringly singular or comes after lengthy counseling, and one employee deserves all the blame. Most of the time, however, a group of employees is in it together for the success and the failure. In order for the employees of an organization to believe and act this way, those at the top must lead this way. They must share the wins and shoulder the losses.