Encountering dangers, threats and risks are a fact of life for everyone, including human beings, animals, trees and all other living creatures. We encounter some sort of threats to our safety, health, well-being and survival, regularly. From our distant ancestors coming together as groups because there was strength in numbers, to the modern day threats like thefts, espionage, terrorism and data hacking – threats are an inevitable part of life.
Recognising the inevitable nature of risks in our lives, mature individuals believe in protecting themselves and others around them. In the professional context, this manifests in the form of a wide variety of security measures. Let’s explore this topic: Each business is unique, each coming within their own industries like essential services, financial services, medical, healthcare, retail and so on. Thus, businesses require different ways to safeguard themselves as well as their activities.
Although different businesses practise different security measures, they always want to protect certain important elements. These elements include people, communication, product or service, finances and facilities. They are the vital ingredients of any business and so, they need to be safeguarded, maintained and supported. Thus, by identifying the few but crucial elements that businesses must protect, we have the chance to identify security measures accordingly. Here are some helpful guidelines for all businesses, especially new ones, to consider and to practise.
A Few Simple and Essential Guidelines to Protect Your Company
- People: Human beings, like you and me, are the primary part of any business. While a new business is founded by a small circle of trusting individuals, their activities are exposed to risks from outsiders with the passage of time. Given that businesses need to grow, especially by nurturing the growth of people, they may inevitably encounter some malicious people. For instance, these can include theives, competitiors, spies, rivals and criminals.
There are unfortunately countless stories of pain, misery, loss and tragedy caused by such malicious people. So, it’s absolutely critical to protect the human element of your business. This begins with employees of your company getting to know each other, bonding and developing a relationship based on transparency, openess, trust and honesty. Creating such a culture takes time, but it’s perhaps the most important quality of a safe, successful and sturdy professional environment.
Once a culture of transparency, trust and support is created within your company, the next step is to extend the same gesture to other people you interact with: clients, customers, partners as well as new employees. Being well-supporting by your working culture of transparency, trust and honesty, you can rest assured that the safe individuals will remain within, but those with ill intentions may be gradually rooted away.
- Communication: Communication is vital to any society, community and business. It’s simply people talking to to share about themselves to each other. In the 21st century, communication is performed by word of mouth or with the help of technological means like our phones, internet and computers. It’s relatively easy and safe to communicate through word of mouth. But as we communicate through technological means, we are vulnerable to risks.
The challenge with common people communicating through the help of technology, is there is little to no knowledge about how safely they may chat, email, call or video call other people. For common people like us, there is often no real way to identify how safely our messages reach other people and whether someone else is eavesdropping on our private messages. Yes, this is one of the biggest concerns within communicating online unfortunately.
There are a plethora of communication apps, websites and software today, each proclaiming that their customers can safely communicate with other people. Some of the famous services here like WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram and Slack do provide safety features like encryption. But no service has been perfect: There have been many issues with almost all online communication services, in one way or another. So, you ought to be careful about how you communicate online.
- Product or Service: Products or services are the fruits of any professional activity. For instance, these can foodstuffs like biscuits to hi-tech products like software. They need to be protected. This applies especially when your products or services go outside from your company and reach your customers.
So, here, many standard rules, regulations and guidelines often issued from governments come into play. These rules are meant to help businesses develop their products or services in a healthy, safe and ethical way. For instance, these rules can help you to make key decisions relating to taxation. They help ensure that your products or services are in fact good and only help customers, not harm them. These rules are meant to safeguard your products or services against unfortunate incidents – which, historically, are usually caused by failing to follow safety rules or guidelines.
- Finances: A lot of has been said about how valuable money is, in general. Money is a crucial part to your company. It’s a very valuable resource to you, your co-workers and almost everyone in your company. But there are an unending number of unfortunate incidents of robberies and thefts, reported in the news. This sadly happens in the professional world too, more often than you may think.
So, as a cautionary professional, you must ensure to protect your financial assets. This begins by learning your own company’s finances as well as ways to safeguard your finances, with the help of a reliable banking service provider. Historically, government banks are considered the safest, with the lowest risks. Still, private banks are emerging often reporting to have kept customers’ money safe, with low risks as well.
With time, you can install some reliable finance management software products within your own company. These software can help you track all sorts of expenses as well as your savings or budgets. Alternatively, you can form a small team within your company to take care of your finances.
- Facilities: Every business makes use of some sort of facility. For instance, a clinic requires some equipments to provide treatment to patients in a good quality manner. Another example, a small retail store has shelves, a cash register and a storeroom for keeping goods. Similarly, almost every business makes use of some sort of facility or another, eiher traditional or more modern. So, such facilities become the underlying physical system helping you to smoothly perform your work.
From time to time, you must maintain your facilities, making sure that they are in a good condition. This helps everyone in your company to perform work safely and confidently. This applies to modern or tech facilities as well. For instance, updating your company’s software or system, installing an antivirus software, relying on a safe network for your internet requirements, just to say a few.
In Conclusion
We all encounter some form of threat, danger or risk to our well-being, almost on a regular basis. Whether it’s in the form of a violent predator or a malicious person, we need to learn to resolve and overcome threats. This perfectly applies in the professional context – because professionals really do face risks and dangers.
Some of the safety-related experts of our society like the police and cybersecurity professionals have said that we may need to become proactive about our safety, rather than reactive. This means that we must become aware that threats do arise inevitably, so must be practise safety measures to keep ourselves as well as our professional activities safe.
As a businessperson, you can follow some of the simple but essential guidelines listed above to protect and to support the well-being of your company.
