Writing role profile accountabilities

Accountabilities are short statements that describe the responsibilities a job holder will be held accountable for by identifying clear ‘end results’.

Accountability statements help the council's job evaluation specialists to understand what the job holder will be accountable for, so that they can make sure the role grade and profile are accurate.

Without clear accountabilities, the job evaluation process will be slower, less consistent and may result in inaccurate grade determination.

Writing accountabilities

Accountabilities should:

• usually be one or two sentences long 
• represent key outputs – describe the ‘what’, not the ‘how’
• emphasise action that leads to end results – they should be clear, not vague
• describe separate ‘end results’ – end results should not be combined in one statement
• be timeless – the statements should be written in such a way that is not dependent on current technology, budget, people managed or other similar conditions
• be up to 9 statements - generally, this should be sufficient to fully describe the accountabilities in a role

Accountabilities are not a long list of tasks or activities, such as attend committee meetings, update spreadsheets, or hold team meetings.

Instead, each accountability should be written in three parts: an action, the subject and the end result. 

Using verbs to describe accountabilities

You should use verbs to describe each accountability. 

This table sets out a range of example verbs that can be used to describe the accountability. This is not an exhaustive list and the headings are only meant to be a general guide to the sorts of jobs where the words may apply.