How You Can Help Protect Your Brand’s Reputation

A business needs to always be thinking about how its brand comes across both internally and externally. Here’s how you can help keep it safe, protect it’s reputation and create a culture of caring.

Apologise With Authenticity During A Crisis

Bad things will happen to businesses at some point in their life, on all matters of different scales and intensity. What you need to consider is how you deal with the situation. You should be prepared for dealing with customers both during and after a crisis and be prepared to apologise to them effectively. This way, you may be able to salvage their trust and help keep your brand intact.

Look After Your Employees

It should go without saying that one of the most important things related to your brand image is how your employees are treated. Employees coming into your business may only come in if they hear good things. And highly skilled employees within your organisation may leave if they don’t like what their company is doing.

Looking after your employees doesn’t only help protect your brand’s reputation, but it will actually lead to increased levels of production. It’s no secret that employees who are happier are happy to work, which means they increase their efficiency.

There are lots of different ways in which you can look after your employees, from communicating with them to find any issues that you can resolve, to supporting them in times of need. One way in which a brand can damage its reputation is by making hard-working employees redundant.

The good news is that there are ways to combat this problem. Outplacement services are for when you have outgoing employees who are leaving due to issues such as downsizing or loss of general income. They will come in and work with your employees to help land them a new job as soon as possible. 

This is a good service to utilise, as it helps ensure that employees don’t leave disgruntled, and will be more positive when talking about your business. This will also be reflected in the general public eye, where your business will come across as caring and thoughtful. You can get outplacement assistance from companies that will be able to explain everything and work with you to find solutions that work for everyone.

Perks And Benefits For Employees

As we briefly mentioned, a brand’s reputation can be made with the treatment of its employees, and perks and benefits are a great way to get them on board. Often, people will decide where they wish to work and apply for based on what extra things they can bring to the table.

Such perks could include work parties every quarter, paid holiday trips, private healthcare insurance or just monetary bonuses. Whatever it is, you should consider speaking to your employees to find what they would like, and how possible it would be to implement.

Align Your Brand Morals With Your Legal Obligations

At the end of the day, you as a business have a responsibility, both morally and legally, to look after your employees. You can help achieve this by mainlining a positive reputation, following guidelines and going above and beyond where possible.

Consider looking into the laws and guidelines regarding workplace health and safety, as you may be surprised to learn what you’re responsible for. For example, you must be able to provide an acceptable amount of lighting with natural tones, in order to keep your employees well-being in top condition.

With the world becoming more digital and cyber, it will mean that you need to consider how to best protect your employees online. If you manage to leak their data in any way, either accidentally or from a data breach, then you could be dealing with serious consequences. Both for the whole business and at an individual level.

Keep Promises

Promises are a sacred thing in life, many people swear by their word, and will never trust anyone ever again if they break it. It’s no different in the business world. If your business makes a promise to your clients, and you end up not being able to keep it, then your brand’s reputation will suffer greatly.

This is one of the best ways in which you can help build up your brand to become more trusted and reliable. Only tell customers something you are sure you can stick to. For example, if you’re offering free shipping, then you must stick to it, no exceptions unless clearly stated.

Support Your Local Community

Many businesses, both new and well established, will do well to remember their roots and current location. Supporting the local area and community, both directly and indirectly, is one of the best ways in which you can get the local community on your side, and trust your brand.