MAKE CONSUMER SAFETY A PRIORITY

SAFETY is a business success secret. To be known for safety must be a goal for every company that wants to succeed and stay ahead of competition. A safety-conscious company is loved by its employees, customers, investors and communities.

You will recall that some years ago a certain company in Zambia was alleged of embalming its meat products. Consumers stopped buying its products immediately even before the allegations could be proved right or wrong.

No one instructed them to stop. They stopped on their own. In that year, the company recorded its lowest annual turnover. This shows the seriousness consumers have about safety. Consumers care about their safety.

It’s business suicide for any company to ignore the importance of safety. Remember you as a company can ignore safety but not your customers. Your customers will never ignore it. No customer wants unsafe products. So integrating safety into your business operations is no longer an option.

In this information age, consumers are better informed. Consumers are questioning the safety of every product. They are not just accepting anything without validating its safety. As a company you cannot afford to neglect safety in what you do and expect to win in the market. Safety gives every company a competitive advantage.

It’s being short-sighted for any company to think that only employees demand and care about safety. Don’t even think that by implementing safety in your company, you are doing your workers a favour. No, you are doing yourself a huge favour.

You need to realise that other key stakeholders like customers, who are probably more powerful than your employees, are demanding safety. You can’t afford to ignore them. This should motivate you to improve safety standards in your organisation.

Customers are demanding safe products. The market is flooded with substandard products which are unsafe to consumers. These substandard products are produced by selfish companies who don’t care about quality and safety of consumers.

Their motive is just to make money. The presence of such selfish companies has forced consumers to treat every company and its products with suspicion.

Consumers are now demanding quality products that guarantee their safety and health. They are more enlightened now than ever before. They consult each other for quality and safe products. They no longer buy blindly.

Any product with safety concerns will not sell. No amount of marketing can make a product with proven safety concerns sell. The best marketing tool for any products is to ensure that it’s safe and of high quality to consumers.

Building safety in product is not a luxury but a necessity if a product is to be competitive in the market. The company that neglects this fact will have to bear negative consequences such as bad publicity.

The spillover effect is that customers will not just reject a particular product but the entire product range of that particular company.

Customers feel that even other products are equally unsafe since they are produced by the same company. It’s not just the product but the company that loses trust and public confidence.

In business, trust is a priceless asset which any company cannot afford to lose. It takes a lot to win trust from consumers. Once lost, trust is more difficult and costly to regain.

Companies should ensure that they produce quality products that are safe and healthy to consumers. You cannot afford to be complacent. The customer is king.

It is vital for the company to pay attention to the demands of customers.

For example for food products, companies should display all necessary information on product labels such as the mark of quality, expiry date, ingredients and nutritional information for the customers to make informed decisions.

The mark of quality such as the mark by Zambia Bureau of Standards (ZABS) gives assurance of the quality and safety of the product to customers and helps them to make shopping choice easily. Therefore, companies should produce safe products.

In conclusion, as a company take a broad look at the various stakeholders who are demanding safety from you. If you only measure the seriousness of safety by the pressure you receive from government authorities, you need to think twice. Government is not the only stakeholder to consider when it comes to safety.

If the government authority is not demanding high standards of safety, other key stakeholders are demanding it. These stakeholders like customers are so powerful that they can either keep you in business or throw you out of business instantly.

Customers are the ones who are directly affected by the safety of your products. Therefore, they take safety personally. If safety matters to your key stakeholders, then it should matter to you as well. Don’t just run your company, run your company safely. Until next week, stay safe. Zambia needs you.

*The author is the CEO of SafetyFocus, a leading safety company in Zambia. For your daily safety tips, like our Facebook page on www.facbook.com/safetyfocussuppliers.

You need to realise that other key stakeholders like customers, who are probably more powerful than your employees, are demanding safety. You can’t afford to ignore them. This should motivate you to improve safety standards in your organisation.