Good business practices lead to good business. Poor business practices lead to negative professional consequences. If you follow the logic behind those two statements, it should give you an excellent moral compass as far as trying to keep your business practices on the straight and narrow. However, not everyone follows these precepts, especially in the name of greed or competition, so bad things can happen to those who bend the rules.
So what are a few of these practices that you can avoid, and what are some of the consequences of harmful practices if you do move ahead with them? If your business does terrible things, you could end up with a whistleblowing situation. If you don’t put appropriate rules in place, sexual harassment cases are on the rise. Without proper oversight, you can have a toxic workplace to deal with. And if you don’t work with your financial team successfully, you can end up with abysmal debt management.
Whistleblowing
If your corporate entity gets too bad and starts doing illegal things, you can definitely end up on the wrong side of a whistleblowing case. Business owners can think they have more power than they really do, but even gigantic businesses can get taken down by the little guy if there is evidence against them. To avoid whistleblowing cases, all you have to do is be transparent and legal about all of your processes, and not cause harm or injury to employees or financial backers.
Sexual Harassment Cases
Do you have sexual harassment training in your workplace? If not, it may be time to refresh that whole mentality. Crazy court cases are going on all around the world because of the new philosophies and pieces of data that are coming out of the woodwork. If men or women in your workplace feel like sexual harassment is an issue, they are being empowered to go forward and tell their stories. If your company is found to be at fault, you can very quickly lose your business to the dark side of the behavior of some of your employees.
Toxic Workplaces
Do you know the signs of a toxic workplace? If you don’t, maybe you need to reread your management handbook. Because if the behavior in the workplace gets too far outside of social norms, that can come back to bite you. You can lose an incredible amount of talent just because they don’t like where they work. It doesn’t matter if they love their job and do incredible work, if the office environment is terrible, they will find somewhere else to go.
Poor Debt Management
In the end, the central pillar of your business is going to be your finances. If you can’t figure out how to manage your debt or your profits, that is going to land you in a dangerous place. Even the best businesses can go bankrupt if there aren’t the right people paying attention to income and expense reports on a regular basis.
