Public Relations: A Practitioner's Guide (part 10)

Employee Relations

by

Charles Lamson

 Strong Employee Relations Equals Solid Organizations

In the 21st century, employee relations matters---a lot.

The reason is obvious, when one considers the fortunes of employees in recent years and the growing importance of internal communications.

• First, the wave of downsizing and layoffs that dominated business and industry both in the United States and worldwide after the high tech bubble burst in the early years of the 21st century has taken its toll on employee loyalty. Although employees once implicitly trusted their organizations and superiors, today they are more hardened to the realities of a job market dominated by technological change that reduces human labor. Today, when companies lay off workers, they are often rewarded by the stock market for becoming more productive and efficient. This phenomenon has caused employees to understand that in today's business climate, every employee is expendable and there's no such thing as lifetime employment. Consequently, companies must work harder at honestly communicating with their workers.

 

•  The widening Gulf between the pay of senior officers and common workers is another reason organizations must be sensitive to employee communications.

• The move toward globalization, including the merger of geographically dispersed organizations, is another reason for increased focus on internal communications. Technology has hastened the integration of business and markets around the world. Customers on far-away continents are today but a mouse click away. Alliances, affiliations, and mergers among far-flung companies have proliferated. Organizations have become much more cognizant of the importance of communicating the opportunities and benefits that will enhance support and loyalty among worldwide staffs.

•  Finally, Research indicates that companies that communicate effectively with their workers financially outperform those that do not. One study found that companies with the most effective internal communications programs returned 57 percent more to their shareholders and companies with the least effective programs ("CEO: Worker Pay Ratio Shoots Up to 431:1," United for a Fair Economy news release. August 30, 2005).

These phenomena suggest that the value of intellectual capital has increased in importance. In the new information economy, business managers have realized that their most important assets are their employees. Employee Communications, then, has become a key way to nurture and sustain that intellectual capital. 

This was not always the case. For years, employee communications was considered less important than the more glamorous and presumably more critical functions of media, government, and investor relations.

Today, with fewer employees expected to do more work, staff members are calling for empowerment---for more of a voice in decision-making. Just about every researcher who keeps tabs on employee opinion finds evidence of a "trust gap" that exists between management and workers. To narrow that gap demands that more effective employee communications play a pivotal role.

Dealing with the Employee Public

Just as there is no such thing as the general public, there is also no single employee public. The employee public is made up of numerous subgroups: senior managers, first-line supervisors, staff and line employees, union laborers, per diem employees, contract workers, and others. Each group has different interests and concerns. Smart organizations will try to differentiate messages and communications to reach the segments. 

Indeed, in a general sense, today the staff is younger, increasingly female, more ambitious and career-oriented, less complacent, and less loyal to the company than in the past. Today's more hard-nosed employee demands candor in communications. Internal communications, like external messages, must be targeted to reach specific subgroups of the employee public.

Grounding an effective employee communications requires management to ask three hard questions about the way it conveys knowledge to the staff.

• 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?

In many instances, the biggest problem is that employees don't know where they stand in the eyes of management. In addition, they often do not understand how compensation programs work or what they need to do to move ahead. This lack of understanding leads to discontent, frustration, miscommunication, problems, and eventually to the feeling that the grass is greener elsewhere. 

Clearly, organizing effective, believable, and persuasive internal communications in the midst of organizational change is a core critical public relations responsibility in the 21st century.

Communicating Effectively in a Sea of Doubt

An organization truly concerned about getting through to its employees in an era of downsizing, displacement, and dubious communication must reinforce five specific principles

• Respect. Employees must be respected for their worth as individuals and their value as workers. They must be treated with respect and not as interchangeable commodities.

• Honest feedback. By talking to workers about their strengths and weaknesses, employers help employees know where they stand. Some managers incorrectly assumed that avoiding negative feedback will be helpful. Wrong. Employees need to know where they stand at any given time. Candid communications will help them in this Pursuit.

• Recognition. Employees feel successful when management recognizes their contributions. It is the duty of the public relations professional to suggest mechanisms by which deserving employees will be honored.

• A voice. In the era of talk radio and television talk shows and blogs, almost everyone wants their ideas to be heard and to have a voice in decision-making. This growing activist communications phenomenon must be considered by public relations professionals seeking to win internal goodwill for management.

• Encouragement. Study after study reveals that money and benefits motivate employees up to a point, but that something else is generally necessary. That something else is encouragement. Workers need to be encouraged. Communications programs that provide encouragement generally produce results. What distinguishes the communication effort at a "better place to work"?

According to Milton Moskowitz, coauthor of the 100 best companies to work for in America, six criteria, in particular, have stood the test of time.

1. Willingness to express dissent. Employees, according to Moskowitz, want to be able to feedback to management their opinions and even dissent. They want to access to management. They want critical letters to appear in internal publications. They want management to pay attention.
2. Visibility and proximity of upper management. Enlightened companies try to level rank distinctions, eliminating such status reminders as executive cafeterias and executive gymnasiums. They act against hierarchical separation, says Moskowitz. He adds that smart CEOs practice MBWA---"management by walking around."
3. Priority of internal to external communication. The worst thing to happen to any organization is for employees to learn critical information about the company on the 10:00 news. Smart organizations always release pertinent information to employees first and consider internal communication primary.
4. Attention to clarity. How many employees regularly read benefits booklets? The answer should be many because of the importance of benefit programs to the entire staff, but most employees never do so. Good companies write such booklets with Clarity to be readable for a general audience rather than for human resources specialists.
5. Friendly tone. According to Moskowitz, the best companies give a sense of family in all that they communicate. One high-tech company makes everyone wear a name tag with the first name in big block letters. These little things are most important, declares Moskowitz.
6. Sense of humor. People are worried principally about keeping their jobs. Corporate life for many is grim. Moskowitz says this is disastrous. It puts people in straight jackets, so they can't wait to get out at the end of the day.

What internal Communications comes down to---just like external communications is, in a word, credibility. The task for management is to convince employees that it not only desires to communicate with them but also wishes to do so in a truthful, frank, and direct manner. That is the overriding challenge that confronts today's internal communicator. 

*SOURCE: THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS, 10TH ED., 2007, FRASER P. SEITEL,

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