Internal Relations
& Employee Communication
Dr. Linda M. Perry
- Employees
- Organisation’s most important public
- Effective two-way communication is foundation for management-employee
relations
- Need understanding, teamwork and commitment by employees
to achieve organisational goals and objectives
- Effective internal relationships
- Must balance needs for employee satisfaction with need for
success
- Chief executive must establish & maintain
- Mutual confidence and trust
- Honest, candid information
- Satisfying status and participation
- Continual work without strife
- Healthy, safe environment
- Optimism
- Management's communication
- Key objectives
- Help employees understand
- Organisation’s mission
- Key issues affecting the organisation
- Information needed to perform assignments
- Promote organisational standards,
- improve service,
- increase social responsibility
- Recognise employees’ achievements
- Media most frequently used
- Employee publications
- Bulletin boards
- Group meetings
- Policy handbooks
- Memos (print or email)
- Face-to-face with “open door” primary for upward,
two-way communication
- Organisational culture
- Shared meanings and assumptions
- Common values system; behavioral norms
- Impacts which model of PR and internal communication used
- Co-acculturation
- Multinational corporations have two or more cultures
- Problems
- Training new employees
- Communication between managers and workers
- Integration of new workers
- Co-acculturation: simultaneous orientation toward others’
cultures.
- PR function as cultural messengers within an outside organisation
- Culture and power
- Abililty to affect outcomes
- Formal: Authority to carry out responsibilities
- Informal: Influence
- Dominant coalition
- Holds the most power
- Determines goals and how business conducted
- Members hold similar ideas and agree on outcomes
- Dominant coalition & PR
- PR function gains power when dominant coalition values it
as a vital function
- Seat at the table
- Input into strategic decision-making
- Assures opinions of publics considered
- Decisions more balanced and enduring, with fewer negative
reactions
- Worldview & organisational culture
- Asymmetrical worldview
- Goal is to get what it wants without adapting
- Produces authoritarian culture
- Centralized decision-making; military
- Symmetrical worldview
- Incorporates negotiation, conflict resolution and compromise
in operations
- Produces participative culture
- Values dialogue and feedback
- Internal communication
- Vision statements
- Where the organisation is headed
- Helps manage reactions to changes
- Mission statements
- The organisation’s reason for being
- Helps employees set priorities and goals
- Helps build commitment to the mission
- Policy documents
- Training materials
- Internal Media
- Employee publications
- Printed still primary media
- Newsletter
- Magazine
- Letter
- Inserts and enclosures
- Brochures
- Reprinted speeches, position papers,backgrounders
- Images and words
- Teleconferencing
- Closed-circuit television
- Video, film and slide presentations
- Visual media
- Displays and exhibits
- Bulletin boards
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- New Media
- New media have changed everything
- The way communication is
- Produced
- Distributed
- Displayed
- Stored
- New media are tools
- Improved speed and quality
- Improved traditional media
- New media have created new ways of reaching and being reached
by internal publics
- Email
- Intranet
- Electronic newsletters & other periodicals
- SMS blasts
- New media tools
- Good writing: clear & succinct
- Visual communication competence
- Need strategic communication
- Message designed to achieve communication objectives for
internal publics
- Need competence in technology
- Web & mobile device design and content
- Interactivity
- Digital publishing and printing
- Unmediated communication
- Face to face
- Meetings
- Speeches and Speakers Bureau
- Grapevine
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