How Organizations Can Promote Accountability
Having a successful organization is about accountability now more than ever. Ideally, CEOs and individuals who have power over their company will be willing to put in the work to make their organization the best it can be. If leaders of organizations are not accountable, it is likely that the rest of their organization will follow suit, leading to unhappy employees and even corrupt systems that could cause issues in the organization’s performance. Accountability in organizations leads to respect, productivity, and success—attributes that any organization could benefit from. Integrating accountability into an organization takes effort, but the results will speak for themselves.
Preventing Corruption from Higher Employees
The United Nations recommends preventing corruption in your organization through transparency. This means transparency on every level—suppliers, employees, and customers should all be aware that your organization does not accept or stand for bribery and corruption. Leaders should be happy to provide fair, working wages to all employees, and an agreed upon amount of money should be provided to suppliers. If there is ever a risk of questionable behind the scenes activity, the situation should be assessed and not ignored. Promoting transparency and accountability from top to bottom in an organization is all about honesty between all parties, and promoting the belief that it is wrong to take advantage of any employees in a company, whether they are in an entry role or have an integral position that the organization could not do without. Everyone involved in your company should feel comfortable knowing they will not be taken advantage of by the higher ups in the organization.
Rules for Equal Rights
In Miami, the wage gap between men and women is large. Women make 80.3% as much as men in Miami, and the organizations that allow this to happen lack accountability. Feeling comfortable with offering women less pay than men for the same position is not accountable because it perpetuates the stereotype that women do not deserve as much pay for the same work, even though the majority of the employed people in the world currently are women. The fact that this wage disparity is allowed is a sign of an organization that lacks accountability. The difference between pay worsens when it comes to women of color, with hispanic women being paid significantly less than white women. Rules should be put in place in organizations so that they hold themselves accountable and promise all workers, regardless of gender, sexuality, or ethnicity, the same wages for the same positions.
Consistency in Brand Values
It is important to consider the brand identity of your organization, and what values are promoted by your brand. If your brand publicly supports sustainability and the Black Lives Matter movement, you need to show that with actions, not just words. If your brand identity revolves around being involved in saving our planet or social justice, but does not back any charities or host any campaigns supporting these causes, it is clear that members of your organization are not holding themselves accountable. Transparency is important in an organization, but that transparency should provide an honest picture of how your organization is acting to support the values that are represented in its brand identity. Your brand having values can have great benefits, but none of these benefits will come to fruition if the values are not expressed in every aspect of the brand.
Becoming a Stronger Organization
In the end, accountability is important because every organization should strive to be the best it can be. An important part of progress in society involves organizations striving to be more sustainable, more fair, and more accountable for those values. Prevention of corruption, providing fair wages, and practicing what you preach are all great first steps toward an accountable organization that consumers will be proud to support. At this point, it is more important than it ever was for a company to have a positive impact on the world, since there are so many that don’t. Being the company willing to become more accountable will make a great difference in success in the long term.
