The public image of a company is just as important as the product it makes. A little bad press can go a long way toward alienating customers and tanking sales, even when it’s entirely undeserved. That’s why it’s important to use ethical products and practices in your business, and make sure that your customers and suppliers know about it.

What are Ethical Products and Practices?

Investing in environmental sustainability, respecting workers, giving back to the community and setting up programs to aid workers in need are just a few ways that companies practice ethical products and practices. It is the code of ethics adopted by a company to ensure integrity among managers and employees. Call it a way to keep all company employees from the CEO down to the truck driver honest. Many companies call this Ethical Manufacturing Standards.

Why should a Manufacturer Care?

A company strives to become a household name—that brand that families use every day, without realizing that it is a brand name product. Band-Aids by Johnson and Johnson is one example, as are the cotton swab Q-tip. Families use these daily, and when they run out they ask for the product by brand name. This customer loyalty can disappear quickly—and that good brand association can be reversed—if the company is involved in a public breach of ethics. Ethical manufacturing standards, products and practices work to prevent this behavior before it becomes an issue.

The best way to build your image as an ethical manufacturer is to adopt standards of your own, and strictly monitor and enforce adherence to them. Often, a company will already have good standards in place informally, but it’s highly important that you formalize these standards, and make sure they’re an integral part of your company’s identity, from the top down. This will improve morale within the company, and also win more than a little customer loyalty.

Eagle Technologies Group is an industry leader in the design and installation of factory automation systems worldwide.