THE “PRIVATE” IN PUBLIC RELATIONS

The Corporate world has always been in a state of flux and humorous confusion. Ask anyone what they understand as ‘public’ in PR, and the answer is almost always the same; general population, customers being current or potential, shareholders and the like. Mostly public relations are managed to reach out positively to the government, regulatory bodies, and financial analysts. However, an essential PR audience of every establishment should be its own work force. The employee strength may vary but the significance of its contribution, its utilization goes a long way in a company’s sustainable growth.

Apart from the obviously invested parties having a direct stake in the company like promoters, investors, shareholders, the employees have a straight relation with the company. All data indicates that a positive work space ignites inspiration and keeps employees more productive at the work place. Happy employees produce more results, take initiative, regard innovation as a personal duty, report at job timely and are more likely to stay on it. Successful ventures in comparison with just rich companies denote a stark difference in the mood of their employees. While one survives in a robotized manner with no direct connect to its own people the other thrives to supersede norms and gravitate towards progress, making rules as they go. A brief analysis of the how and whys of employee satisfaction and its direct consequence on PR is as follows.

Businesses are realising direct proportionality of happy workers with financial benefits and strategizing it as an effective tool for enterprising. The most common complaints of employees include:

1.      Stress due to work load leading to unnecessary work pressures.

2.      Unrealistic expectations veering away from the descripted job profile. While this can   be converted into an opportunity, most times the transitional period is cut short and leads to mounting management strife.

3.      Dissatisfaction with the salary statement. Negotiations can be increasingly one sided and may leave the employee with little options in a tough economy.

4.      Many are rightfully concerned with job security. Although all legal paperwork is filed by the company, undefined roles, untimely changes, lack of trust, constant repudiation of submitted work, lack of motivation may cause major distrust adversely affecting output.

5.      Inability to modify and mature according to market trends can clamp opportunities outside and reduce possibility of growth.

Such instances have direct impact on the grade of employee participation, starting with bunking work, long periods of Absenteeism. This denotes the dampening interest of employees at work. Today we are intricately connected with the world, be it our allies or rivals. Any such information about employee dissatisfaction takes seconds to be out and significantly attacks a company’s public reputation discouraging prospective employees and tarnishing its public image. Approximate computation of loss due to lost days of work can amount to millions in a month depending on the nature and size of business. Surprisingly, more detrimental is inconsequential Presenteeism. Companies chart rules where one has to clock minimum working hours in a month or week, which even if complied with doesn’t meet company standards. While on the one hand salaries are paid out, no quantifiable work in done to meet targets. While the worker is physically present, there is no productivity, and this is mostly attributable to stress. This leads to waste of time, valuable resources and has been known to set companies financially and in terms of reputation. Today communication enabled by social media has resulted in status updates, emoticons and while most work places discourage using personal media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like, the same is out of their sphere beyond working hours. Most companies’ reputation is spread by word of mouth. There has also been a significant increase in litigation in defamation cases, violation of contract etc., whereupon the liability rests with the employee in case of sharing company information. Very strict guidelines are formulated in this regard. India has MNCs from the world over who have introduced this corporate culture and solidified legal manoeuvres to check violation of Intellectual Property Rights. In this regard they encourage employees to use company’s online media as a representative and be made equally accountable for it. In the long run this is conducive to their growth but can often spell trouble for employees for being unable to grasp the full magnitude of provision-laden hefty legal contracts. The intention should thus be not to bind but to include in the process of growth.

         Management and Administration play a vital role to gauge employee mood, make attempts to understand levels of stress or dissatisfaction and be directly involved to monitor mental viability. There should be a formal policy to deal with such recurrent issues.

On the other hand a positive workplace environment makes the employees eager to identify themselves with the company while improving their productivity, efficiency and willingness to volunteer in new projects. They are also keen on giving a helping hand to their fellow employees and in an inclusive manner supporting the administration provide solutions to tackle workplace issues. Work relationships improve and company culture becomes a healthy habit. All of the gritty issues are resolved and take a positive turn. A happy company can give turnovers to the tune of billions in a week if it be so. Most influential examples include Google, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where employees are able to take Social Impact Leave for 3-12 during which staffers can engage in volunteer work for social causes. This massively improves the company’s CSR. Recently Vodafone announced paid maternity leave for all of its female staffers throughout the world, similar to Google’s uber bolstered maternity leave version, specifically the “Baby Bonding Bucks”. Now companies are innovating on ways to connect with their staff to replace the dull channels or template suited HR communications systems.

All in all perks of positive employee feedback can magnify a company’s media presence. They are more likely to stick to their jobs cutting costs for recruiting. Employees have reportedly showed improvement such as feeling energized, satisfied, more focused, more effective in their efforts, efficient utilization of time and less sick leaves per year. The most apparent results are in growth in business since happy employees promote the company and participate in networking activities, increasing business innovation.

Thus it is imperative to constantly upgrade internal relations to send a positive message throughout, which does more than half the work for Public Relations. The key lies in private improvisation. Happy Employees convert to Happy Enterprises.