Accountability is one of the most desirable qualities in an employee. After all, who wouldn’t want employees to take responsibility for their own work and be on the track to achieve individual, team, and organizational goals?
While it is incumbent upon the employees to be accountable, there are some steps the organization can take to ensure and encourage accountability. In this post, we’ll see some of these.
Visibility and Transparency:
Employees who feel a sense of responsibility and accountability expect the organization to respond in kind. They would like their efforts noticed and their performance rewarded.
By increasing transparency and visibility, the organization will be signaling to the employees that they have the employee’s back. This will help motivate and encourage the employees to be accountable.
Skill Deficit:
Sometimes, when employees don’t take accountability, it could be because they realize that they don’t have the requisite skill set to do the job. Take steps to reduce this skill deficit by training the employee.
Feedback:
As with skill deficit, feedback is another important aspect of increasing accountability. Ensure that this feedback is constructive and given as soon as possible.
Work Status:
Not all employees have the same sense of accountability. Unfortunately, some employees routinely try to escape from work. To make sure that such occurrences do not happen, ask employees to submit daily reports on the status of work. Double-check to verify that the work has actually been done.
Time and attendance: This is where most of the employees, even the high-performing ones, falter in their accountability. They are not punctual enough or try to get away with fudging their timings.
If your organization does not have a fool-proof way of verifying time and attendance, they can indeed get away with it.
Use biometric devices paired with to track time and attendance. This is tamper-proof and will act as a deterrent to late-coming employees.
We’ll see more in the next part.
