Circle of Trust more important than ever

The Circle of Trust among businesses, consumers and the Better Business Bureau is more important now than ever before. The current business climate – both the highs and lows – demands it.

On April 15, six businesses from Northern Colorado and Wyoming will receive the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Business Ethics. All are deserving of the honor and all are excellent role models for how good business practices and ethics result in successful businesses.

The owners and managers of these businesses, however, didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to operate their businesses in an ethical fashion. They were trained, sometimes from a very early age by their parents, teachers and others, on the importance of doing the right thing, even when it’s the hardest thing to do.

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Education and outreach is key to the future of an ethical business climate here in Northern Colorado, across our country and around the globe. This is why in coming months and years you will see the BBB Foundation enhancing its efforts with numerous new programs and offerings designed to bring trust back to the marketplace through education, advocacy, empowerment, recognition and research of ethical practices with BBB Accredited Businesses, future Accredited Business owners, and consumers.

The BBB Torch Awards, now in its 12th year, is one of our most visible programs to date. For the last nine years, the BBB has partnered with the business colleges at the University of Northern Colorado, Colorado State University and the University of Wyoming in preparation of Torch Award nominations as part of business ethics classes. This puts university students in touch with business owners and managers who work hard every day to ensure ethics are visible in all aspects of the business, from employment practices to customer and vendor relations. Students find out first-hand what is involved in running a business that maintains integrity, transparency, honesty and truthfulness.

To enhance this program, the BBB Foundation is working with the universities in several ways to expand business ethics teaching opportunities. Guest lectures from previous Torch Award winners, implementation of an ethics simulation course, empowering students to make tough ethical decisions, and developing an ethics training/aptitude course for BBB Accredited Business are all programs that are on the table.

Tied closely to the Torch Awards, the award-winning BBB/Rotary Ethics Scholarship effort has been an important partnership for BBB. It is so rewarding to present an annual $5,000 scholarship to one of our talented and committed high school students from Colorado or Wyoming.

Message of trust

In coming months – and years – you’ll be seeing your BBB out and about throughout our 38-county region in Northern Colorado and Wyoming as we share with businesses and consumers our message of trust, business ethics and marketplace trends. We will continue to sponsor community events that benefit our business and consumer communities like our first shred and e-cycle event that resulted in 551 consumers dropping off 6.2 tons of documents for shredding and enough electronics to fill two semi-trailers.

And when it comes to consumer issues, we are taking a proactive stance with the formation of Fraud Front, a collaborative effort with law enforcement and consumer regulatory agencies.

Online we are breaking records for driving consumers to trustworthy businesses and organizations. We are Linked in, tweeting and making friends on Facebook. In the last 12 months we topped 1 million instances of services. Our search-engine optimization efforts mean we now show up in the first pages of Google, Yahoo! and Bing, and we have a new search-engine widget that lets consumers easily identify BBB Accredited Businesses. And we are partnered with JD Powers.

With a couple clicks of the mouse, you can find trustworthy Accredited Businesses and request a quote for a service or a product. You have access to our BBBlog and consumer and business tips and information, including scam alerts. You can find Business Reliability Reports for more than 4 million businesses in the United States and Canada. If you are an Accredited Business, you can use the BBB online seal on your own Web site to let consumers know you are a trustworthy business.

The Better Business Bureau is more relevant than ever before because trust is more relevant than ever before.

Pam King is president/CEO of the Better Business Bureau serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming. Contact the BBB at wynco.bbb.org or call 970-484-1348 or 800-564-0371