BEWARE OF YOUR INTERNAL PUBLICS! They can make or break you

It is often said that positive word-of-mouth is the strongest form of Public Relations (PR) an organisation can ever have and if it’s a profit-making organisation, it could even increase its profit margins.

However, most PR Practitioners often seem to forget this, as well as neglect those most capable of spreading the positive word – the employees.

Employees who are often referred to as internal publics are the main public relations representatives of the organisation.
They represent the organisation in their communities - they are the face and voice of their organisation in their communities.

Their attitude and behaviour inside and outside their workplace and their knowledge (or lack thereof) of the organisation’s operations can often make or break an organisation’s image.
Negative attitudes and lack of trust by employees towards their employer creates a negative internal culture which could affect productivity and sometimes lead to high staff turnover.

“Research published [...] by lobby group Business in the Community suggests [that the] internal communication of companies' values and priorities is key to attracting and keeping talent.” (PR Week)

Most often, if not always, PR practitioners leave the job of satisfying employees to the Human Resource (HR) department, but it is now becoming increasingly important for PR practitioners and Marketing departments to work hand-in-hand with HR departments to put the employees first and listen to their views.

It is therefore important for public relations practitioners to be more aware of their internal publics and always include them in any PR campaign they plan to undertake.

Organisations should develop effective internal public relations programmes geared towards making the employees feel valued, such as organising awards ceremonies for employee recognition; showing interest in employees lives by organising family events; and informing them (although not revealing all the details) on what is going on in the workplace so that they are not caught by surprised or feel embarrassed when asked by public members on what is happing within the organisation during a crisis situation.

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Ethics and Credibility of the Public Relations Profession

Will the public relations (PR) profession ever gain credibility and respect from the media and the general public?

Two years ago, the majority of a 350 strong audience attending a PR Week debate on Ethics agreed that lying was sometimes necessary to achieve your communication objectives.

Some people were appalled by the voting outcome, but honestly, is that not what the profession is about – selective communication? Persuasion? When you omit some information from the public, are you not lying and being dishonest to your publics?
Isn’t that what clients expect and why they value the work of PR agencies and professionals – ‘airbrushing’ the facts?

Public relations professional bodies also do not seem to help the situation, because they do not take any action against registered members who disregard their professional code of conduct.

The problem is further compounded by some PR practitioners’ unwillingness to join the professional bodies for fear of prosecution, which in actual fact never happens anyway as stated above. Professional bodies seem to more interested in making money from their training programmes and ridiculously high membership fees.

The public and the media, and even PR professionals are also getting very suspicious of organisations’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes, because organisations don’t always live up to their ideals as projected in their CSR programmes.

The question we should ask ourselves is why we continue to debate about this? Should the question really be about the PR techniques that we use and about whether we decide to disclose or not disclose information or should the debate rather focus on the interests of the organisation that we represent – whether their interests are ethical or unethical?

As a former public relations practitioner, I have learned that it is almost impossible to be truly transparent to your publics, because it is not always in the best interest of an organisation to reveal the whole truth as this could ruin the image of your organisation. Even if you do tell the truth, you tell it in a way that it does not make your company look as if it’s run by poorly trained managers.

You simply cannot bite the hands that feed you, but as a PR practitioner, you need to set a balance between representing your organisation and its publics, because you have an ethical responsibility to both parties, especially the latter.

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