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click here now to learn morePage link: Go straight to "Hints in Business Ethics"
Now Available: Customer Service Training: Give your staff the boost they need and increase your customer retention rates and profits.
Click Here to read more and place your order.
Now Available: ARDENT Programme© for Business: The CEPNZ now provides a business development resource with guidelines, principles, work sheets and assistance to help your business to become more enthusiastic about providing quality services and products and improving your business performance, employee morale, and defining your business goals and values. This programme can help towards increasing a company's productivity, sales, worker morale and standing within the community - both in image and performance.
Click Here to read more and place your order.
How can businesses help the community through character?
Those that are leaders in business now need to become leaders in the community by giving of their time, experience and often through finance. Modern trends now describe this as "Social Responsibility". As responsibility is a virtue and the development of good character relies in the nurturing of virtues, businesses need to build upon their character - how they are perceived in the eyes of the community.
Community involvement is even more important now than it has ever been. Jim Heavner of The Village Companies (USA) once said,
"Those managers who are most successful in achieving their goals...have also been those who have been most prominent in community leadership roles...The ethics should be that you give according to your ability to give....the more you have been blessed with opportunity, the greater the responsibility you have to give something back."
The CEPNZ will spearhead initiatives to involve NZ businesses, whatever their size, in this practise. These will involve areas such as:
- Employers and Employees volunteering as tutors at schools or giving of their time to share their business experience.
- Business-Community partnerships to find ways to improve our communities.
- Greater access for students to holiday work experience.
- Business training provided by the employer to train lower achieving children in order to develop a pool from which employees can be drawn in the future to reduce the possibility of unemployment.
- Commitment to retraining 'street kids' to give them the skills and the opportunity to develop the self-esteem and character needed to begin their own businesses or new trade skills.
- More ideas to come - join the discussion group and list your own.
In the mean time, why not consider sponsoring a school in your area to get onboard with the character education programme? See here for details.
If we want to see an improvement for our future, we need to look at the leaders of tomorrow, our children. Their education and welfare is our main concern and the problem is too big to leave it up to our educators or wait for the government to sort it out. The total involvement and co-operation of businesses with the community, our families and our schools is required. Don't just think about it - procrastination didn't make you a business leader - get involved.
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- Become involved in helping your local schools to combat truancy and unauthorised absences. Have you ever noticed the number of school age children walking around you area or coming into your shop during school hours? Whether they are accompanied by adults or not, they could be off school ground without authorised permission and may even be involved in shop lifting.
Over 360 schools are using our Truancy Resource Pack to help combat unauthorised absenteeisms. You can help these schools by displaying their posters which state that you will not serve children under the age of 16 during school hours. You may even want to help your local school through a display of Social Responsibility and purchase the Pack for them (from only $49.00). Why not get involved in our "Terminate Truancy" nationwide initiative: click here to open in a new window.
Another way that you can help the future of NZ business is to assist our youth to develop into people of integrity and good character. Social statistics prove that there is a general lack of character in our emerging youth and the CEPNZ has developed a programme to assist school with training them in the development of character. Your business can sponsor a school by purchasing this resources pack for them. For more information on these resources see www.cepnz.co.nz/school.html or for more information on how you can help financially, click here.
- Punctuality is part of your responsibility. If you advertise that your shop or business in open for trading at a particular time - make sure you're open on time. If you make an appointment to contact or see someone - respect their time and ensure you keep to your word.
- If you advertise a special - make sure that you have the stock on hand to provide that special.
- Treat you customers with respect - if you want to form a regular customer base, customer respect is essential.
- Have respect for your employees - manage your business with integrity and ensure that your employees know what you expect from them and what they can expect from you in return. Be consistent.
- Ensure that you pay you bills on time (ie. Invoices paid by the due date). This ensures that you are worthy of the trust that your supplier has placed in you. When you are given an invoice to be paid by a certain date (whether the 20th of the month or within 7 days), your supplier has budgeted on that invoice being paid by that date. If you don't pay, they may not be able to pay someone else and so the cycle goes on. How you pay is a display of your degree of integrity and honesty.
See also the "Community" page.
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