A culture of employee accountability requires clarity, consistency and coaching. It’s only three little c’s. Easily said, difficult to provide…unless you enlist your in-store video infrastructure to be a partner in the effort.

Experts agree that fostering accountability is critically important towards motivating employees to deliver for you. In fact, a recent Gallup Workplace article explains that accountability (when leveraged properly) can dramatically improve morale, results and employee turn-over!

The recipe for success is:

Clear expectations
Consistent coaching
Follow-up to recognize progress

But, in the retail business, there’s always too much to do and so little time. So, we need to think differently.

Think about how you’re already using video to address other big-picture concerns like shrink, incidents and internal theft. The key is further leveraging those same assets to do more and be smarter—so it also enables your managers with the necessary information to establish and sustain a culture of accountability.

Intelligent software can cross-analyze sales, data trends, video and even audio across multiple locations at once to give retail managers all the information and opportunity they need to provide coaching in real-time (both in-person and virtually).

Gallup Workplace:

Gallup recommends encouraging managers to have frequent coaching conversations with their direct reports; performance is best directed in the moment.

Only 47% of workers received feedback from their manager “a few times or less” in the past year. A company’s accountability problem may actually be a coaching problem in disguise.

“Fact- and intelligent video-supported feedback is direct, meaningful and delivered in-context—exactly as it would be if we could all be everywhere at once.”

“Fact- and intelligent video-supported feedback is direct, meaningful and delivered in-context—exactly as it would be if we could all be everywhere at once,” said Ezri Silver, Co-President of US Polo. “Our DMs are thrilled with how they can provide guidance on specific issues even when they aren’t present in-store.”

Rather than using a proverbial “stick,” you can foster employees’ innate desire to be part of a positive culture of accountability. Constant communication and coaching are possible (even for busy managers) with smarter systems that use what you already have to deliver actionable insights. Enlisting your in-store video infrastructure as an accountability partner will pave the way to happier, more productive retail environments.