Tarnished Reputation: Tips for Cleaning Up the Company Image

Has your company made a mistake? Or perhaps a business you represent has made some mistakes and wants to repent. Hard as it may be to recover goodwill, it is not impossible. In this article, we will discuss three ways that goodwill can be recovered with specific, recent examples.

Actively Fix Mistakes
BP Oil essentially destroyed the Gulf Coast in 2009. Not only was the water heavily polluted, but many jobs in the oil and fishing industries went away quickly, leaving many families destitute.
What did the company do? It answered the court's decision that it had to repay up to its limit (tort) and then kept contributing to the effort. This involved creating clean-up jobs, reimbursing fishermen, and funding research.
BP Oil is in no way regarded well for the catastrophe it caused, but it was able to stop the bleeding by staying involved and owning up to its huge error.

Restructure Company Leadership
The Wounded Warrior Project is a much-beloved charity among billionaires and the middle class alike. However, the $800 million charity has come under extreme scrutiny for operating more like a Fortune 500 company than a non-profit, and many people were turned off by this. The CEO, for example, was earning nearly $500,000, while having the charity purchase expensive airfare for him when he traveled.
In the past week, the CEO and COO stepped down and the original founder of the organization - who had been deemed "too small" in the past - is being considered to bring back the original intention of the organization, which is to get vets what they need, and fast.

Reach out Publicly
Police departments across the country have come under extreme levels of scrutiny lately. And while some of it is earned, much of it is not. For this reason, police departments are making it public when extreme acts of good policing occur.
This occurred last year when a female officer answered a noise complaint and challenged the young ladies in question to a dance-off, completely diffusing the situation. It also happened earlier this year when a patrolman responded to a noise complaint from a homeowner about kids playing basketball in the street. He played with them, ensuring that the kids were safe, and that they knew they could trust him.

It is crucial that your customers (or community) know that you care about your actions. This can be shown by fixing mistakes, replacing bad leadership, or promoting the good actions of your team. Your company should know when mistakes have been made and how to best correct them. Talk with a lawyer or even a professional with an online master degree in criminal justice to see what your options are as a business and what correcting a mistake or reputation might take.

About the author

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information, contact Brooke via Facebook at facebook.com/brooke.chaplan or Twitter @BrookeChaplan

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