Teams have a strong role to play in promoting workplace well-being. Shared agreements and mutual accountability, plus practices such as active listening and mechanisms for feedback, accelerate the well-being of the entire team.
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In today's workplace, the old adage rings truer than ever: people don't leave jobs, they leave teams. While competitive salaries and benefits matter, the daily experience of working with colleagues often determines whether someone stays or leaves a job. We spend too much time at work to let a toxic environment undermine our personal health and well-being.
We know kids thrive with boundaries and structure, but adults also feel secure when relationships are predictable. Having clear parameters for what behavior is expected and accepted builds safety. A free-for-all culture without rules (or with ever-changing rules) keeps us on high alert. This constant vigilance is exhausting and unsustainable.
This is why team accountability in workplace well-being isn't just a nice-to-have; it's essential for organizational success. A lack of accountability practices is not only harmful to us as individuals but also to teams. Without safety and accountability, good workers leave, institutional knowledge is lost, and continuity is disrupted. Clients pay the price with poor or disorganized service, and turnover is expensive for the organization. Everyone loses.
Safety and Accountability Go Hand-in-Hand
To begin thinking about what accountability measures might look like on your team, first start assessing the safety of your culture. Having psychological safety means team members can take interpersonal risks such as generating ideas, making mistakes, or showing emotions without facing negative consequences. Safety is a prerequisite for accountability, and it also reinforces team accountability. Safety makes keeping each other accountable feel possible, and the boundaries of accountability contribute to safety.*
Agreements, Not Rules
Team members can then agree to hold one another accountable for maintaining a culture of safety. Accountability works best when it’s mutual, so rather than implementing rigid rules, successful teams develop shared agreements. These agreements differ from traditional rules in several key ways:
Agreements are collaborative rather than prescriptive
Agreements focus on positive outcomes rather than punitive measures
Agreements align with team values and mission statements
Agreements are flexible enough to evolve with the team's needs
Agreed-upon norms and expectations, supported by organizational values, are a far more powerful motivator than a list of rules. At first, these explicit agreements about behavior may feel unnatural, but with practice and commitment, they will simply develop into a habit. Then, it will become who you are.
At Chefalo Consulting, we use these Group Agreements for every community space we host, whether it be an in-person training event, a virtual workshop, or simply a meeting:
Practices for Team Accountability to Workplace Well-being
Self-awareness
It’s important to acknowledge that we all bring past professional and personal experiences with us into the workplace. Everyone has limitations and can be pushed, triggered, or overwhelmed. This makes it crucial for team members to understand their own limits and to approach accountability with sensitivity and awareness.
Listening
This skill needs to be developed as a team, not just individually. When teams learn to listen actively together, they create spaces where everyone feels heard. Listen with the intent of understanding the other person, not to find places to insert your perspective or share your own story. Withhold judgment, remain curious, ask insightful questions, seek clarity, and reflect back details you hear. Trust that your colleagues will do the same for you.
Boundaries
Calling colleagues “family” is popular and often meant to signal trust or closeness, but this is not a trauma-informed practice. Family dynamics are often dysfunctional and work relationships aren’t permanent. Show up authentically, but don’t feel like you need to share your deepest self at work; you don’t. Don’t overpromise when you know you’re at capacity and respect others’ limits as well. Clear boundaries protect everyone involved and help maintain healthy workplace dynamics.
Communication
Most teams under-communicate; it’s rarely the opposite. Regular check-ins should go beyond simple task updates to include discussions about workload and capacity. Many successful teams share their individual triggers and preferred support methods, creating a framework for understanding and supporting each other during challenging times. Further, before you need it, outline clear protocols for communicating concerns. Then, when team accountability slips (it will!), you have an agreed-upon way for reflecting that back to the team.
Feedback should never come as a surprise attack. Establish structured approaches to sharing feedback, with clear guidelines for both giving and receiving input. Effective teams address small issues immediately before they can grow into larger problems, always focusing on specific behaviors and their impact rather than making personal judgments. Giving and receiving feedback is tough, but with an approach you’ve all agreed on, you can focus your attention on the feedback itself rather than how it’s delivered. Your shared commitment to active listening and communication will also make giving and receiving feedback easier.
Rituals
Actions performed in a customary way are what we consider to be rituals. Workplace rituals work particularly well in unpredictable work environments to provide stability and connection. A specific time or event can initiate a ritual. Decide as a team what you need most of. Is it connection? Gratitude? Physical activity? Reflection? Then, build in rituals to support your team goals. Examples of rituals include:
Tidying up the office together at regular intervals
Taking short walks in pairs
Planning healthy team lunches
Check-ins at the beginning or end of a shift
End-of-the-week gratitude emails
Structured debrief sessions after significant events
Environment
A well-maintained workspace – whether digital or physical – directly impacts team accountability and well-being. Cluttered shared drives or messy break rooms create unnecessary friction, while organized spaces promote efficiency and respect. Establish team norms for keeping both digital and physical environments tidy and functional. This could mean regularly archiving outdated files, labeling shared documents clearly, or setting expectations for resetting meeting spaces after use. A clean and intentional environment signals a culture of mutual care and responsibility.
Habits
Workplace well-being isn’t just about policies; it’s about the small, consistent habits that teams encourage in each other. Prioritizing rest, movement, and recovery should be normalized, not treated as an afterthought. Many employees leave PTO unused, fearing they’ll seem less dedicated, but a culture of accountability includes making sure colleagues take breaks, use their time off, and set sustainable work rhythms. Teams can reinforce these habits by celebrating unplugged vacations, modeling good sleep and exercise habits, and checking in on each other’s workload to prevent burnout.
Avoiding the Trauma Triangle
Common, unhelpful dynamics emerge within all groups. We take on roles that are familiar to us, but that stunt group progress. Trauma Triangle roles are easy to slip into but are sometimes hard to recognize. Be mindful of when you or one of your team members are:
Consistently swooping in to fix problems (role of Rescuer)
Often feeling stuck or powerless (role of Victim)
Quick to blame others (role of Persecutor)
When these totally normal but negative personas arise, there are ways to shift the energy. Rescuing behavior can become Supportive behavior, Victim mentality can reframe toward a Driver approach, and Persecuting can become inquisitive Coaching. Call on your self-awareness, nonjudgment, open communication, to escape workplace reenactments and shift towards empowerment.
Change is Teamwork
Remember: change starts with each member's commitment to supporting not just their own well-being, but that of their colleagues. Building team accountability for workplace well-being is, as they say, an ongoing journey, not a destination. It requires consistent effort, but the payoff is huge: a workplace where well-being is shared by all.
Let's explore how we can help you and your team implement agreements and practices that contribute to well-being in your workplace. Book a 30-minute discovery call with us today.
*Safety is foundational to workplace well-being, so we’ve written about it extensively. Read more about safety here: