Healthy Business Relationships
by Cathy Wagner - posted April 5, 2019

Whether you work a minimum wage job or earn top dollar, you rely on other people for your livelihood. Everyone you interact with in a work or professional capacity is part of your business community. Relationships are built over time as you depend on each other to produce and sell products or services.

It's not surprising that many of our business relationships are as dysfunctional as our more personal relationships. Employees often feel unappreciated and under valued, while business owners can feel beleaguered with costs and responsibilities. It can be hard work for both sides, and if these relationships are unhealthy, if can become impossible.

What are some examples of unhealthy business relationships?

• Overcharging customers
• Poor customer service
• A customer who unloads on a store clerk because they've had a bad day
• Using substandard or even toxic materials in products
• A boss who's a bully
• An employee who's just marking time
• Undercutting suppliers and contractors, or demanding too much of their time
• Suppliers and contractors cheating business owners or not meeting deadlines
• Business owners who see employees primarily as draining their profits
• Management and employees who see customers as an inconvenience
• Job discrimination: race, sex, age, sexual orientation
• Sexual harassment

Every single one of these situations shows a complete lack of respect for their business community. Left unchecked, each one can degrade a business over time either through decreased sales, a high turn over rate of employees, loss of suppliers and contractors, or legal fees.

Business owners will have to take the lead to guard against these types of unhealthy relationships, but they can't do it alone.

• They will need employees who are willing to do their job efficiently and with a good attitude - Luckily, most employees who are paid a livable wage and treated with respect are glad to do this.
  
  
• They will need to hire management that can develop healthy relationships with employees – Good managers are leaders who won't ask others to do something they wouldn't, if necessary.
  
  
• They will need to research their suppliers and contractors, and offer a fair price for goods and services – If the only suppliers/contractors you can find have bad reputations, maybe you need to rethink your business plan.
  
  
• And they will need to remember the money that flows in from customers is not profit. Profit is only what's left after the price of doing business has been paid. If there is a crimp in the cash flow, they can't just extract it from their business community, they have to come up with a better plan.

Of course, employees, suppliers, contractors, and even customers should be held to the same standard. Each party should be treating the others with honesty, courtesy and respect in an effort to create healthy business relationships. If relationships become unhealthy, it is probably time to sever them.

We spend nearly one third of our lives at work, imagine how much less of a drain it would be if our business relationships were healthy. If more people could commit to this way of being, then more unscrupulous people would have to adapt if they want to keep doing business in our communities.