Good relationships benefit business. A simple statement, but true nonetheless. More challenging is adopting the right approach to ensure that emergency and specialty practices cultivate good working relationships with their target audiences. In this entry, I focus on the issues that practices should consider implementing to nurture productive, professional relationships.

The Scouts certainly got it right! The motto “Be prepared,” admonishes members to equip themselves to successfully deal with the difficulties they confront.

And while I hardly think the Scouts were concerned with addressing human resource issues related to hiring and firing and preventing a legal quagmire, the advice, nonethelss, is particularly relevant to managers responsible for personnel issues. Avoiding legal and emotional fallout from a sloppy hiring or firing requires managers to proactively address legal and ethical issues.

We just finished exploring the last law of the Eight Laws Governing a Healthy Workplace, which is to have grief processes in place when traumatic events occur onsite.

“What keeps you up at night?” is almost a universal question. When used in a business context, once you get past the glib responses from employees, colleagues, or clients (ie, crying babies, a drippy water faucet), you will have information that can be used to improve your response to the concerns of your staff and clients.