Regardless of your situation, your organization likely depends on a tech stack—a collection of tools, platforms, apps, and software—in order to execute its business operations. Since no single piece of software or no single app can help your business achieve everything it needs, successful businesses often leverage numerous tools—hence, a tech stack.

But with today’s increasing demands on IT teams, managing a tech stack and ensuring you continue to use the right ones for your business can be a huge challenge. Just consider all the tools that a business needs—from internal communication systems and CRMs to accounting software and learning management systems. So how do you ensure accountability?

In this blog post, we’ll share four ways to increase accountability so you can achieve your business goals.

1.    Review your existing tech stack.

In order to create accountability among your IT team, you first need to know which tools your company is currently using. We suggest approaching your tech stack from a stance of understanding which business functions and processes are supported by each tool, rather than looking at the tool itself. It may help the auditing process to start with specific teams or departments. Here are some helpful questions to guide your discussions:

• What are your top business processes?
• Which tools are your team currently using to complete these business processes?
• Are there any additional tools that your team uses to complete daily tasks?
• How frequently is each tool used? How ingrained in the business process is the tool?
• Does the tool have the potential to serve more functions than it currently is?

Be sure to log the tools in your company’s tech stack and keep this updated as you add, replace, or remove them.

2. Practice strategic human resource planning.

A strategic human resource plan will help you maximize the skills, talent, and time of your existing team—whether that’s a more filled out IT department or just one person (if it’s the latter, then human resource planning should help identify the appropriate time to hire additional employees). A successful plan starts with the specific business goals your IT team wants to achieve and assesses the current state of your workforce to identify any gaps. We suggest considering:

• How many employees are in your department?
• How many employees hold each position?
• What are the education, skills, abilities, and qualifications of each employee?
• How are the employees performing?

Once you’ve taken stock of your team and its capabilities, you can forecast the number of people needed and the talent level needed in order to achieve the specific business goals you have in mind. These can include incorporating new company products or services as well as technological advances and automation.

3. Set clear, achievable goals for each employee.

Every employee on your team should have a crystal clear understanding of their larger goals, ideally on a quarterly basis, and how those goals tie into the goals of the organization as a whole. This way, it will be much easier to hold your employees accountable and you can keep a reign on blame culture and finger pointing——no one should ever have to question what their responsibilities or daily tasks are, or who should have done this or that. In addition, setting goals for employees will help them feel more tied and impactful to the success of the business—a crucial component of increasing job satisfaction.

In a smaller business, it will be very common for an IT employee to perform multiple jobs, so simple daily tasks and issues may typically fall to the most skilled individual. That’s why it can be helpful to partner with an external firm so internal employees are deployed to the areas where they can make the most impact with their unique skills and qualifications.

4. Give clear feedback, often.

Providing regular clear and specific feedback is one of the most important aspects of increasing accountability. If you have feedback for an employee, don’t sit on it—deliver your constructive criticism and appreciation in a timely manner. These consistent check-ins create learning opportunities for employees to know whether they’re on track with their goals or not performing up to expected standards.

Get Started with Fuse.Cloud

Ensuring accountability among IT teams can feel like a huge challenge, especially if your business is depending on people who “inherited” their jobs in IT or only have one person to support the entire organization. But it’s a serious issue that can lead to blame culture, finger pointing, and decreased job satisfaction—and when that exists within a department as crucial as IT, it can derail the company’s success as a whole.

That’s why we suggest working with an IT vendor. An external partner can reduce the culture issues within your team by truly owning specific functions and responsibilities, such as voice, internet, and IT.

Ready to explore what that looks like?

Fuse.Cloud is the premier VoIP and fiber Internet service provider for thousands of customers across industries and sizes. Our IT solution also offers proven Managed Networking, Firewall Services, Desktop/Server stack solutions for protecting your infrastructure. And it’s all wrapped in our 24x7x365 support.

Contact us today and let’s discuss which fiber option can help your business become more resilient and successful in today’s competitive landscape.