Employee

The Practice of Public Relations
Thirteenth Edition
Chapter 11
Employee
Relations
Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Part III: The Publics
Learning Objectives
11.1 To discuss an often-overlooked but core critical
constituency for organizational management, the
internal public.
11.2 To explore the philosophy of dealing with employees in
an era of layoffs and meager job growth.
11.3 To discuss the various tactics—print, online, and
broadcast—of communicating with the internal public.
11.4 To examine the ways that social media have
complicated and made more challenging the function
of communicating with employees.
Opening Example: Beckerman Email
• The persuasiveness of
social media has brought
brutal honesty to
employee relations
• In 2013, Andrew Mason,
co-founder of Groupon,
tweeted to the staff after
he was fired
Figure 11-1 Back on the street.
Learning Objective 11.1
• To discuss an often-overlooked but core critical
constituency for organizational management, the internal
public.
Worker Relationships Strained
• Layoffs across sectors
• Rising pressure to reduce income inequality
• CEO pay vs. average worker pay ballooned in 50 years
from 20 to 300 times
Worker – Boss Relationships
Strained
• Highly engaged employees help the bottom line
– Firms with highly engaged employees – shareholder
returns 19% higher than average
– Firms with low engagement levels – shareholder
returns 44% lower than average
Management Questions (1 of 2)
1. Is your leadership rolling out a new strategy or initiative
that will require more engagement than ever from your
employees?
2. Do you need to activate or reengage your employees as
advocates or ambassadors?
3. How well is the urgency for change understood and acted
on within your organization?
4. Should leadership communication be a critical
component of delivering on your company’s strategy or
organizational performance goals?
Management Questions (2 of 2)
5. Are you searching for novel ways to renew or reinvent the
employee experience? Are leaders looking for better ways
of engaging their teams?
6. Does your employee engagement research provide
sufficient insights for leaders to build trust, cultivate two-
way dialogue, and engage employees on critical
priorities?
7. Do your current drivers of employee engagement support
the business you need to become?
8. If employee engagement remains at its current level or
decreases within your company, is there a downside risk?
Critical Internal Communications
• Employee relations matters
• Trust in government, business, media, and NGOs was
below 50% in two-thirds of countries
• Trust in the CEO as a credible spokesperson continues to
decline
Reasons for Credibility Loss
• Pace of downsizings and layoffs
• Gulf in pay between senior officers and common workers
• Globalization hastened integration of business and
markets around the world
• Companies that communicate effectively with workers
financially outperform those that don’t
Trust Gap
• Employee communications used to be considered less
important than media, government, and investor relations
• A trust gap exists between management and workers
• More effective employee communications play a pivotal
role
Learning Objective 11.1: Discussion
Question
• What societal factors have caused internal
communications to become more important today than in
the past?
• To explore the philosophy of dealing with employees in an
era of layoffs and meager job growth.
The Employee Public (1 of 2)
• No general public; no single employee public
• Numerous subgroups:
– Senior managers
– First-line supervisors
– Staff and line employees
– Union laborers
– Per diem employees
– Contract workers
The Employee Public (2 of 2)
• Each group has different interests and concerns
• Smart organizations differentiate messages and
communications for each segment
How Do You Convey Knowledge to
Staff? (1 of 2)
• Younger, increasingly female, more diverse, ambitious,
career oriented, less complacent, less loyal staff
• Questions to ask
– Is management able to communicate effectively with
employees?
– Is communication trusted, and does it relay appropriate
information to employees?
– Has management communicated its commitment to its
employees and to fostering a rewarding work
environment?
How Do You Convey Knowledge to
Staff? (2 of 2)
• Biggest problem often employees do not know where they
stand in the eyes of management
• The more workers understand how they fit into the big
picture, the more secure and loyalty they will become
Communicating “Trust” (1 of 2)
• Six criteria
1. Willingness to express dissent
2. Visibility and proximity of upper management
3. Priority of internal to external communication
4. Attention to clarity
Communicating “Trust” (2 of 2)
5. Friendly tone
6. Sense of humor
• Southwest Airlines is one
company that prides
itself on its sense of
humor
Figure 11-2 Alien company.
How Not to “Cosi” Up to Employees
• How would you assess
the Cosi CEO’s
comments to investors?
• Had you been the Cosi
public relations director,
how would you have
suggested the CEO
frame his remarks?
Figure 11-3 All is not Cosi.
Credibility Holds the Key
• Employees want facts; not wishful thinking
• Trust in organizations would increase if management
– Communicated earlier and more frequently
– Demonstrated trust in employees by sharing bad news
as well as good
– Involved employees in the process by asking for their
ideas and opinions
• Well-informed employees = organization’s best goodwill
ambassadors
S-H-O-C the Troops Communications
Must Be…
• Strategic
– Where is this organization going?
– What is my role in helping us get there?
• Honest
– Management trust may be low
– Can’t build credibility by sugarcoating
• Open
– Feedback
– Two-way communications
– Solicit, listen to, act one employee views
– Action is key
• Consistent
– Regular, on-time, predictable communication program
– Steadiness is key
Question
• Summarize the keys to dealing with employees in today’s
business environment.
• To discuss the various tactics—print, online, and broadcast
—of communicating with the internal public.
Internal Tool Kit (1 of 2)
• Internal Communications Audits
– In-depth interviews with management and
communicators
– What management wants from communications team;
what communicators think management wants
1. How do internal communications support the mission of
the organization?
2. Do internal communications have management’s
support?
Internal Tool Kit (2 of 2)
• Internal Communications Audits
3. Do internal communications justify the expense?
4. How responsive to employee needs and concerns are
internal communications?
Online Communications
• Blogs – employees post opinions and views of the
company
• Podcasts – audio or video monologue, or on-location
content
• Video – video libraries where employees can search,
comment, tag, embed, or upload
• Mobile (Bring Your Own Device)
The Intranet
1. Consider the culture
2. Set clear objectives and let it evolve
3. Treat it as a journalistic enterprise
4. Market, market, market
5. Link to outside lives
6. Senior management must commit
Other Tactics
• Print publications
– Newsletters
– Integrate with online publications
• Bulletin boards
• Town Hall Meetings and Suggestion Boxes
Internal Video
• Video has an up-and-down history as an internal
communications medium
– Internal television, including streaming video, is
demonstrably effective
– However, internal video must be approached with
caution
– Unless video is broadcast quality, few will watch it
Face-to-Face Communications
• Best communications vehicle is face-to-face
• Supervisors are the preferred source for most employees
• Formalized meetings may mix management and staff in a
variety of formats
• Value of meetings lies in substance, regularity, and candor
from managers
Question
• What are some important employee communications
tactics? How should each be used?
• To examine the ways that social media have complicated
and made more challenging the function of communicating
with employees.
Internal Social Media
• Social media policies should be based on common sense
• Social media effectiveness depends on
1. It must have a business purpose
2. It must be entertaining as well as informative
3. It must be composed of riveting content
The Grapevine
• Rumor mill can be treacherous
• Identifying source of rumor difficult and not worth the time
• Do not overlook the value of explaining how you reached a
decision
• Grapevine may be valuable because it is believed
Question
• What are the primary considerations in adopting internal
social media?
Case Study: Sony Shoots the
Messenger (1 of 2)
1. How would you assess
Sony’s handling of the
hacking scandal?
2. Had you been Amy
Pascal’s public relations
advisor, how would you
have suggested she
handle the fallout from
the e-mails, adjudged
Figure 11-7 The provocateurs.
as “racist”?
Case Study: Sony Shoots the
Messenger (2 of 2)
3. Had Pascal asked you
to counsel her on what
to do in light of her
husband’s email about
the roundtable, what
would you have
suggested?
Figure 11-8 The e-mail executioners.
An Interview with Jay Rayburn (1 of 2)
• Jay Rayburn is an eminent
professor of public
relations at Florida State
• He believes the
relationship between
organizations and their
employees is relatively
good and improving
• Employees want to know
what’s happening in their
business
An Interview with Jay Rayburn (2 of 2)
• Social media more
important to millennials
• CEOs should tell the truth,
tell it all, and tell it quickly
• Students who want to be
public relations
professionals should read,
write, do internships, know
the business, and fix
what’s wrong
Copyright

Employee

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Employee

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Employee

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Practice of Public Relations

Figure 11-1 Back on the street.

Figure 11-2 Alien company.

Figure 11-3 All is not Cosi.

Figure 11-8 The e-mail executioners.

You might also like