In most businesses, especially those with a medium to large number of employees, ensuring adequate accountability can start to become a serious issue.
Whether that’s making sure people remember to lock up at the end of the day or ensuring the use of appropriate communication channels when talking about sensitive topics, you need to take a systematic approach when tackling these issues.
There are numerous effective solutions that you can implement nowadays, depending on the issue in question – let’s take a look at how to identify and practically implement those systems.
Identify accountability blindspots
The first thing to note is that employee accountability will look very different across various professional contexts. That means that the first step to improving employee accountability must consist of identifying any accountability blind spots that may exist in your business.
Whether these turn out to be related to key management with fleets of work vehicles or the use of personal emails to send sensitive client data, starting here means that you can focus your search for security systems based on the actual problems that you’re trying to solve.
Finding modern security systems
Once you know what kinds of accountability issues you’re trying to target, you can start looking for solutions. There are an almost overwhelming number of options to choose from nowadays, from RFID tags to key cabinets from providers like Traka, and you need to make sure that you choose the right options for your specific operational requirements.
Choose systems that are maximally relevant to the issues that you’re facing, relatively easy to integrate into your existing system architecture, and that will be able to adapt as your business continues to change or grow.
Ensuring regulatory compliance
When implementing any kind of security system, it’s important that you also keep regulatory compliance in mind. There will be a number of potential concerns, from client data privacy to insurance-related issues, and it’s much easier to avoid any of these potential complications in the first place than it is to retroactively fix them.
Make sure that you engage your legal team in this process, and if your company doesn’t have such a team internally, engage a relevant niche-specific consultant to make sure you cover your back.
Integrating with company culture
Lastly, most of these systems will only be maximally effective if you manage to integrate them into your company effectively. Consider the impact that each of these system changes will have on your employees’ workflow, for example, and engage them in discussions on how to minimize any negative impacts.
Overly complex systems will result in people identifying shortcuts and will reduce their potential efficacy substantially.
Improving employee accountability requires a nuanced and subtle approach, often achieved by integrating cultural changes with tangible systems. In many cases, it won’t be something that you achieve overnight, but will rather be a target that you and your team will have to work towards, tweaking your system bit by bit, based on the findings of your ongoing analyses.