Hall of Shame & Wall of Fame
The Forum of Private Business has been a watchdog for bad business practices, particularly late payment for over 4 decades. Following complaints from many of our members, we created the “Hall of Shame” which has become a trusted mechanism for member and non-member companies to highlight bad business practice, where we investigate, confirm and if required add the offending company to the Hall of Shame.
In that time, we have shared some of the UK’s biggest names for poor payment practices, resulting in government intervention, extensive media coverage and some businesses reconsidering and changing the way they do business.
The Forum believes that there needs to be a balance between the need to attract and support bigger companies to the UK and protecting the interests of the UK’s hard-working independent small business people who supply these larger companies. We need to make a change in culture around paying smaller suppliers and we support the campaign to pay in 30 days while ensuring we have the best environment for business.
With that in mind, we want to highlight good behaviour and best practice so we have added a Wall of Fame, to highlight those businesses we feel have the best payment processes and procedures as well as provide a goal for poor practitioners to aim for. So if you take the appropriate actions you can move from the Hall of Shame to the Wall of Fame!
All small businesses ask is to compete on a level playing field, but in some cases, this is not happening. A change will only occur if we continue to ensure poor business practices, particularly late payment is questioned and do not go unnoticed.
What we can achieve
Cultural change is a key motivator behind our Hall of Shame & Wall of Fame. We hope that the businesses we contact will correct the issues before they are entered into the “Hall of Shame”. We will work with those that do go into the Hall of Shame, with a specific aim of reviewing their business processes, discussing, and correcting them. Once improved practices have been shown we will remove them from the hall of shame.
Companies that are displayed within the Hall of Shame that respond positively, will often be highlighted as positive examples and we will highlight these on the website under “Best Business Practice” on our newly created “Wall of Fame”.
We can only stop unfair and unethical business behaviour if we do not allow it to go unnoticed. Historically, ethics and profitability have been treated as being mutually exclusive. But we live in an era now that “businesses can operate in an ethical manner and still be a thriving profitable business”
Do not suffer bad business practices in silence and equally, do you know of any companies who deserve to be congratulated on their good business practices, with suppliers and customers, if you have examples of either do let us know and they can be entered into our Wall of Fame. Please use the form below to tell us about bad and good business practices.
Tell us about your current experience of bad (and good!) business practices.