Accountability is the act of taking ownership of your actions. When you are accountable, you accept the consequences and rewards for the results you provide. Accountability is the key to the organisation’s success as it ensures trustworthiness and builds credibility.
Accountability comprises four core components: participation, evaluation, transparency, and feedback mechanisms. This means accountability is achieved when goals exist, ownership is delegated, transparent evaluation occurs, complete transparency ensues, and regular feedback exists.
This blog will help you explore the four components of accountability and its benefits in-depth. Read on to understand accountability, its core components, and how it can shape your organisation successfully.
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What's Accountability?
Accountability is taking ownership of your actions. It is also doing what you say you will do in a timely manner. It ensures a smooth functioning organisation where there is trust and leadership.
This buzzword helps organisations hold their employees responsible for their work and results.
For instance, suppose you lead a team of five people to present a project to a client. As a leader, you will be held accountable for the project’s results irrespective of whether you did the task. You can hold your team accountable for the tasks assigned to them.
Further, accountability helps analyse your employees’ efforts and reward them accordingly. It helps ensure you have clear set goals and examine key performance indicators to achieve your goals timely. Finally, accountability helps your employees own the outcome irrespective of the result.
The Four Components of Accountability
Now you know what accountability is. Let’s explore the four core components of accountability in detail.
Participation and Goal Setting
A main core component of accountability is participation. This involves the decision-making processing and goal-setting process that Chief Operating Officers, Board of Directors, Board of Trustees, and Stakeholders conduct.
Moreover, it involves setting specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals the organisation needs to achieve. Plus, the participation stage is what makes the organisation 10% closer to achieving accountability.
Evaluation and Task Delegation
The evaluation and task delegation component of accountability includes understanding the goals and creating to-do lists. It also involves understanding the goals and evaluating the importance of each goal. As an organisation, you need to do this to evaluate whether the goals set are relevant based on past experiences and competitive analysis.
Once goals are evaluated, you need to delegate tasks to your employees and assign accountability. You’ll need to evaluate whether your employee has the necessary skills to take accountability. Plus, you’ll need to evaluate the importance and urgency of tasks to do, delay, delegate, or delete.
Transparency and Communication
While delegating tasks and evaluating goals, you need to be transparent with your employees. Transparency from employees and employers is the key to establishing accountability. Transparency means that you need to communicate organisational expectations with clarity, comprehension, and truthfulness.
Being transparent means outlining the tasks, actions, steps, expected results, and timelines honestly without hiding anything.
Further, if your employee has any issues, you must create an environment in such a way that they can be honest with you. They should be able to be transparent about their shortcomings so that they can receive the necessary training. Moreover, the work environment should have seamless communication and timely update on goals and policy changes.
Feedback Mechanisms
Accountability is incomplete without having a two-way feedback mechanism. You should provide timely and constructive feedback to your employees regarding their progress. Plus, you should provide weekly, monthly, and annual feedback reports to help your employees grow.
Additionally, you should be willing to accept constructive criticism from your employees regarding the work environment, tasks set out and progress in goal-achieving.
The feedback mechanism should involve not mere comments but also actionable steps to rectify errors and grow.
Benefits of Accountability
The four core components of accountability make it easier to hold employees accountable. It also helps employees hold the organisation accountable. Overall, having accountability only benefits the organisation. Here are the benefits of accountability:
- Fosters trustworthiness
- Encourages organisational growth
- Makes goal setting easier
- Increases productivity in the organisation
- Helps understand the capabilities of employees and create training programs
Endnotes
Accountability is being able to accept both rewards and consequences of your action. It is being responsible for your role in the results without playing the blame game. It ensures that the organisation runs smoothly without significant hiccups.
One of the core components of accountability is developing specific, measured, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. This means you are participating in the organisation, and then you evaluate the goals in the eyes of stakeholders and customers. Then ensure you communicate transparently and provide feedback so your employees are on track.
When you include the four components of accountability in your organisation, you can reap its benefits. There will be no blame game, your customers will be satisfied, and you will generate more profits. Plus, turnover will reduce.
If you have any issues developing accountability in your organisation, contact TickThoseBoxes. They will help you build a 100% accountable organisation
