Reasons to be Transparent When Facing a Business Crisis
It’s common for businesses to face financial problems. Even the best business plans could end up getting messed up for unforeseen reasons. While you might try to hide what’s going on, you can’t do it forever. If the crisis starts to worsen, you have no choice but to reveal the information to your employees. It’s better if you become transparent right from the start. These are the benefits of transparency in the face of a crisis.
You can motivate your employees to help you
Just because your company faces a crisis doesn’t mean it’s over. You still have a chance to recover from it. With the help of your employees, it’s possible. Make sure you motivate them and let them know what your plans are. Explain how they could be a huge part of the process to reverse the status quo. When your employees realize that they have a significant role to play, they will do their best to help.
You want to give everyone a choice
Transparency is also crucial to ensure that your employees have a choice to leave if they don’t believe the company can recover. You don’t want to hide the truth and start firing people when you can no longer afford to keep them in your team. It’s better to be upfront about it, even if it means you will start losing some employees.
You want accurate information to come out
Another reason to be transparent is to control the narrative using facts. You don’t want others to know what’s going on through the grapevine. There might be misinformation and inaccuracies. You will damage the brand further because of the incorrect details circulating around. Worse, your employees will overthink the situation and decide against their best interest. Before it happens, the truth should come from the top.
Your competitors will take advantage
When you’re on your knees, it’s an opportunity for your competitors to take over. They will gain advantage because of gossips about your business being on the brink of failure. Again, a crisis doesn’t necessarily mean you will fail. However, other companies will seize this opportunity and try to win the game. Before you know it, they already told the customers not to trust your business anymore since you’re failing.
Transparency leads to trust
Employees will trust you based on your words. It’s critical to have an excellent relationship founded on trust. The lack of transparency will break it, and you can never win it back. You will also have a hard time finding new people to fill the post because you didn’t prove that you can be trusted.
Hopefully, you won’t have to go through a challenging time when running your business. If you do, don’t forget to always be transparent. It doesn’t matter how tough the times are, your employees will understand the situation. They’re mature enough to determine what to do with the information provided. You have to trust them to do what’s in the best interest.
Photo Attribution:
1st and featured image from https://www.business.com/images/content/588/676853287b17c07611141/1500-0-
2nd image from https://blog.hubspot.com/service/types-of-crisis
