You need to avoid scandals in your business. A scandal will attract both the attention of the media and potential customers or clients. The media will dominate headlines with the scandal and clients and customers will wonder whether they want to do dealings with your company at all. It’s fair to see that the phrase ‘no publicity is bad publicity doesn’t ring true here.’ Being infamous in the business world will cause profits to dwindle and questionable loyalty from customers.
Just look at The Weinstein Company. The business is being sold for parts after the allegations against the head of the company. Here, it wasn’t just the CEO who was affected. The business itself has more or less come crashing down. This is just one example of how a scandal can bring down a company. Let’s look at a few others.
Environmental Trouble
You might find that the scandal that impacts your company is related to the environment. In this case, we’re thinking regarding of something like an oil spill. BP certainly face their fare amount of bad press after they were found to be responsible for gallons of oil flooding into the ocean, killing wildlife and damaging the environment. Who was actually responsible for the issue is still debated to this day. Now the company survived, but it had to. BP is such a powerhouse there was no way it wouldn’t. That’s not to say that there weren’t consequences. There almost certainly were and at least a few people will have lost their jobs.
One does have to wonder whether the same would be true for a smaller company and the answer is probably not. In fact, it’s likely that an issue like this could take down a medium-sized company. After all, customers are increasingly worried about the environment these days. That’s why if you are working with oil, using the best oil water separators should be a fixed part of your business model. And don’t forget, the opposite is true. If you can prove that you are taking your responsibility to protecting the environment seriously, then you’ll have plenty of support from customers.
Security Trouble
Or finally, you might deal with an issue with security. This was certainly true for Equifax. The credit score checker was caught in the position where they lost hundreds of millions of people’s data. Unfortunately, instead of admitting to doing this, they tried to cover up the issue. This, of course, made the situation even worse and security is certainly a hot button issue these days. Don’t fall into the trap of not taking it seriously and then suffering the consequences.
To avoid this type of scandal, you need to put all the pieces in place to protect your company. If you do still get caught out in a hack, then do make sure that you are open and honest with what has happened when addressing customers and clients. They will find out one way or another, so it is better they hear it from you.
