Personal Choices That Have Business Consequences
The success of your business doesn’t have to do just with your business decisions. In fact, many of the personal choices that you make will have extreme consequences for your company. These consequences may be immediate or only come later. They may have short-term effects, or they can be permanent. Though many people assume that business and personal decisions are separate and have separate consequences, this is not always the case.
Consider that a few examples may illustrate this point. Getting caught using drugs can affect your business. Overuse of alcohol can disrupt the company. Someone who uses social media poorly can suffer consequences to their firm. And behavior in private life can come up as something that will affect people’s approach to your products, goods, and services.
Drug Use
If you get caught using drugs as a business owner in particular, there are many different possible ways that the situation can resolve itself. If you’re struggling with addiction, then going through an addiction recovery program may be good enough. You may find some relief in looking for an overseas rehab that can help you come back to yourself and overcome your issues. However, if some aspect of your drug use has affected someone negatively or has affected the image of the company, that may be the end of the line for you.
Alcoholism
Though business and alcohol have a theoretical and practical synergy, overdoing it can create significant issues within your company culture. Especially if you or someone in your company ends up having a drunk driving accident, that can be a massive drain on legal and financial resources. At company events, it is often alcohol that gets blamed for bad things happening when people become too uninhibited around coworkers as well. Individual personal decisions regarding alcohol use can have a direct correlation to worker performance as well.
Social Media Use
When you use social media for business, there are many positives that can come from it. However, if you have a personal account, and you put things publicly online that are offensive or out of sync with your company’s image, that may be a cause for you to get fired. We see it all over the place these days. Someone will dredge up an old post from 10 or 15 years ago, and high-powered people are getting fired or removed from projects. Use social media for business intelligently. Keep away from using social media for personal use to avoid conflicts.
Behavior In Your Private Life
Even though the private life of a person isn’t necessarily connected to business life, that doesn’t mean that people won’t hold your business accountable for your personal actions. If you believe that your entitled, criminal, or abusive behavior won’t be found out eventually and affect your business opportunities, then you’re kidding yourself these days. Act right, and you won’t have any problem with people trying to find moral outrage at your company policies.
