PUBLIC RELATIONS’ ROLE
The public relations function, providing the communications channel between employers and employee groups, is important on both sides of the relationship. Practitioners are called on to participate more or less continuously in four phases of an employee’s work experience:
• The start. For example, recruiting programs or help-wanted advertising, orientation sessions, tours, or kits of information.
• On-the-job working conditions. For example, employee publications, bulletin boards, feedback systems, training meetings, morale boosters, surveys of attitudes, complaint sessions, and teleconferencing.
• Rewards and recognition. For example, award programs, implementation of employee participation in civic affairs, staging of political science or economic education events, old-timers’ parties, open houses, wage increases or bonuses, promotions, annual reports to employees, and so on.
• Work stoppage or termination. For example, communications during a strike, layoff, or boycott problem, news about benefits for retirees, a retiree publication, projects to help laid-off employees relocate, or exit interviews.
In carrying out duties related to these four phases, the public relations people are usually teamed up with the human resources department in a large organization. In small organizations, all the duties related to employee relations and communication may be vested in one public relations or human resources employee.
No matter who is assigned the duties, the responsibility is as communicator, interpreter, and persuader for the employer. The duties include feedback of employee opinion and ideas as a guide to management. So public relations practices are the fulcrum of a two-way relationship-building and communication system, and therefore must earn the trust of the employees.
RULES OF EFFECTIVE EMPLOYEE RELATIONS
Although a variety of tools are available to further employee-employer communications, five basic principles prevail as guidelines for the practitioner:
1. Employees must be told first. Employees should be the first to be told information affecting them and their jobs; the employer should speak directly to them. The relationship is adversely affected when employees learn from outside sources about matters that affect them. If this happens, two-way trust is jeopardized. As a practical matter, external sources cannot do as complete a job of informing employees as the employer can. The grapevine is one of the worst possible sources in the eyes of employees, even though it ranks as high as No. 2 in actuality, according to a recent survey. News media as a source are just as bad.
2. Tell the bad news along with the good. All too often, organizations exploit internal news channels to report only “good” news, usually complimentary to the employer. That practice wears thin. The tools and the messages lose credibility. Motives become suspect. Employees look to other sources, such as unions and the grapevine, for a more balanced, objective perspective. Revealing good and bad news, openly and candidly, builds trust, common purpose, and productivity.
3. Ensure timeliness. Information important to employees has the same obsolescence as news of other kinds. Getting it out fast and accurately builds dialogue and trust. Delay opens the door to sources with half-truths, distortions, and bias unfavorable to the employer. Delay is the cause of most rumors, and, once started, rumors are difficult to dislodge. The employer’s task is to be the first and most reliable source for employees. To do or be otherwise puts, and keeps, an employer on the defensive with those on whom the organization depends most for its success.
4. Employees must be informed on subjects they consider important. Years of studying employees’ views of communication within their organizations reveals specific items they want to know about—often quite different from what management thinks they want to know about (or ought to be told). The list has changed very little during the years such research has been conducted (See Table 3.1).
5. Use the media that employees trust. Recent studies replicate older ones about which sources of information employees prefer. Even in recent years, with the advent of e-mail and intranets, employees are still keen to get information face-to-face—from immediate supervisors, small group meetings, and top executives. In order, they prefer:
a. Immediate supervisors
b. Small group meetings
c. Top executives
d. Large group meetings
TABLE 3.1 Subjects of Interest to Employees Change Little
Rank
Subject
1
Organizational plans for the future
2
Job advancement opportunities
3
Job-related “how-to” information
4
Productivity improvement
5
Personnel policies and practices
6
How we’re doing vs. the competition
7
How my job fits into the organization
8
How external events affect my job
9
How profits are used
10
Financial results
11
Advertising and promotional plans
12
Operations outside of my department or division
13
Organizational stand on current issues
14
Personnel changes and promotions
15
Organizational community involvement
16
Human interest stories about other employees
17
Personal news (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.)
e. Employee handbook or other booklets
f. Orientation programs
g. Regular local employee publications
h. Bulletin boards
i. Annual reports to employees
j. Regular general employee publications
k. Upward communication programs
l. Audiovisual programs
m. Unions
n. Mass media
o. Grapevine
Employees were asked in the above study which were their actual information sources, as opposed to this listing of preferred sources. Two were far out of line: grapevine, last on the preferred source list, was ranked second as an actual source; bulletin boards, number eight in preference, in actuality ranked third.
Participants in a 1999 communications study by IABC and Watson Wyatt cite e-mail as the most frequently used communications tool now (90 percent). But it is not a magic communications pill, according to the study. It received a low (55 percent) effectiveness rating. Clutter is a factor in its ineffectiveness. Employees receive a significant number of e-mails each day, both business and personal. An organization cannot be sure its employees are really taking the time to process and understand their electronic messages.
Using a focused communication strategy that combines a mix of methods and tools brings the most success, finds the study. This mix includes in-person meetings, printed newsletters, intranets, open-door policies, and e-mail.
• Key strategy is face-to-face interchanges, with managers and supervisors seen as communication links first and foremost—not only from the top down and the bottom up, but also laterally (between departments and work groups). Consequently, public relations departments often must coach and train supervisors and managers in interpersonal communication skills.
