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5 Ways to Increase Transparency in Business

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5 Ways to Increase Transparency in Business

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One of the most important parts of being comfortable with a company is trust. We need this not only as customers, but also as employees. It is important to build a community of trust within a business for many reasons. Information and people are the most important asset of a company and to experience the greatest success, a company must use those assets to the fullest possible extent.

Bringing those two assets together is a matter of building interpersonal trust – which leads to sharing and collaboration.

Transparency in your business will also help to avoid unnecessary risks. When you don’t have transparency, people tend to take risks in a business that they would not normally take. The instances of lawsuits are also diminished because it is possible to discover and put an end to any misbehaviour and violations of policy or law right away.

Employees can feel threatened when changes are made to protocols, but this is required when increasing transparency. In turn, they may try to hold back any progress in placing these changes into effect. Employees, customers, and shareholders should all feel that they have a voice and own an important role in the business. If everyone feels that they are a part of things, they will generally be more accepting of change.

There are 5 basic concepts to increasing transparency in your business. Each is important in the scheme of making your business a welcoming community of openness, honesty, and accountability.

  1. Update Your Internal Processes

You’ll never be able to achieve transparency if you aren’t aware and up to date of everything that’s going on within your business. This includes both what your employees are doing and how your business is operating.

If you want to gain a better insight into employee work (and make things easier for them), give them new software to work with that enables you to track their progress. If you wish to increase transparency in your finances, use a faster payments service to provide you with up-to-date accounts. Faster payments also mean your clients and employees will be happier, as everyone gets paid on time.

  1. The Truth is Important!

If you leave out details that don’t seem to shed a positive light on your business, it could be viewed as a lie. Give as many details as possible because omission will be viewed the same as a lie. Even if the details are negative. Telling the truth isn’t always that easy. No one likes to make a mistake or let someone down. Put yourself out there and own the problems while making it clear that you are working toward solutions.  Your customers will value your business a lot more for it.

  1. Faking It Is a Mistake

Similar to the points discussed above, you should also refrain from being “fake”. Say only things that you know to be true and find people to turn to for things you don’t know. If there are questions concerning a certain department, refer them to the department leader. You want to ensure that the information being passed along is accurate. Remember, if you aren’t an expert, be resourceful.

  1. Be Responsive and Timely

It is important to let customers, employees and shareholders know in a timely manner, that you recognise there is a problem and you are working toward a solution, rather than avoiding them and leaving them hanging to draw their own conclusions. When there is a conversation, you should always make sure you are participating in it. Be available to listen to the views of others. It is ok to have an opinion, but don’t close the door on the opinions of others. Always allow them to share their ideas.

  1. Think Community

Transparency is also about creating a community, giving credit where it is due and being caring to everyone involved. An openly transparent community can generate new ideas and educate customers. Community building and participation will help you to better understand your audience and customer base, so you can better target them with the products and services that they want and need.

There’s no magic to making your company transparent. A relationship must be built in which everyone has an important role and information is exchanged freely and accurately. If you want to become more aware of what’s going on internally, try working on some of the above mentioned tips.

Andy McGowan
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