Hidden Areas to Research When Investing in a Company

In today’s investment market there are a plethora of fantastic opportunities. From sustainable and renewable energy to totally green companies as well as the medical industry; we are reading about companies excelling in leaps and bounds. You may have narrowed down a list of the companies and you are interested in, but there is one more step that you will need to take. Doing your homework on the real company, may be a bit more involved, but it should be the basis for your investment decision. This is going to involve knowing what kind of company it is: how do they treat their employees? What kind of customer service and/or technical support reputation do they have? Are they in a right-to-work state?

Knowing a company and their reputation falls into more of a grey area of investigation. At first glance, all of the white papers, portfolios and overall information about a company may look sound. However, we all know that the success of a company is also based on a number of factors. Digging just a bit deeper into these areas will open up a more clear view for your decision for investment.

Let’s face facts. The staff of a company makes a company. No matter what the vision or goal is, if the top down management is bad, this will trickle down to the staff as well. Constant employee turn over, workman’s compensation complaints and general employee lawsuits is a pretty clear picture that the company is not all that it says it is. When it comes to your investment dollars, ignoring the man-behind-the-curtain can be a total mistake. You will need to do a bit of research into other areas from their customer side as well. Check out their website and see if they list customer testimonials as well as contented or happy customers. See if the company has a social networking page and read the data that is listed. Do a Google search on the company itself, as well as the CEO and possibly the management and board members. You will want to remember that some information on the net can be rather ambiguous and not all net info is true; however, if you see a repeating pattern, it will lead you down the right path.

Another consideration is whether the corporate office is located in a right-to-work state. This is important. While right-to-work-states were originally designed with the idea that it protected an employee from being forced to join a union or organization that they didn’t want to be a member of, the states that have adopted this attitude have taken advantage of the many loop-holes. One of the biggest problems is that in a right-to-work-state, an employer has all of the rights. They can fire a staff member for any reason, discriminate against a potential employee and are legally allowed to do things that other states won’t tolerate. Another important topic is that if an employee is injured, no matter how severely, they are completely limited when it comes to suing an employer. The only confirmed rights an employee may have fall under Workman’s Compensation. This includes horrible situations such as loss of limb(s) and even loss of life. If complaints are filed with the Federal Government, you have to prove that the employer treated all staff members with the same misconduct. In essence, employers get away with more than they would in a non-right-to-work-state. At the current time, the list includes: Alabama, Arkansas,Arizona, Florida, Indiana(Pending), Georgia, Kansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Louisiana, Nevada, Nebraska, North Dakota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Dakota, Utah, Texas, Wyoming and Virginia.

The importance of researching a company that you will be investing in will take you beyond just the front face that a company is showing you and through a back door to see the basis for the company’s success. The investment market is expansive and you want to ensure that your dollars are placed in a company that will show long term gains.

Sources:
http://www.nrtw.org/d/rtwempl.htm

The information supplied in this article is not to be considered as medical advice and is for educational purposes only.