Taking Care of Your Own

A difficult economy is no time to neglect the people you need the most: your workers and your customers. Think employee relations and corporate social responsibility.

By Erin Jenkins Pagán, Patterson/Bach Communications, Maitland

 

Employee relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are two areas where organizations tend to cut the most in tough times. Yet, these are areas where people of influence, including employees and consumers, hold the longest grudges and have a substantial impact on the bottom line. In fact, research shows people more often choose to work for and patronize an organization according to how it treats employees and its demonstrated commitment to CSR.

Let’s take a moment to look internally. Rarely, do organizations look inward. They choose a message, announcement, marketing promotion and even leadership changes and immediately want to “get the word out.” In doing so, many times they blatantly skip the first crucial step: getting the word in!

Ever asked a salesperson details about his/her company’s marketing promotion and received a blank stare? Been the first to tell an employee of a company announcement you read or heard in the media? Or, asked a company representative a question and received an answer completely out of sync with the mission statement hung in the lobby? Most people can answer yes to all three of these questions. These situations result from companies overlooking their internal publics.

Organizations have multiple internal publics, from employees and members to shareholders and boards of directors, who are crucial to the success of developing and delivering messages externally. These internal audiences have the ability to become brand ambassadors and help a message succeed — or be left out of the communication loop and unknowingly contribute to its failure. Even if an organization has distributed its message to 30 million consumers via the media, if the message is not properly embedded internally, it’s not only bound to fail, but it could backfire as consumers expect the organization to deliver on that message.  
As a result, it’s smart, even when business is bad and times are tough, or when business is good and days are hectic, to take the time to place important emphasis on internal rollout and the embedment process prior to the launch of any external communication. Regardless of whether it's a significant campaign or a small announcement, this will be time well spent. An organization’s entire dynamic and culture is changed for the better when internal publics are made to feel important and integral to success.

Now, let’s look at an area that affects both internal and external publics, based on the way companies view their responsibilities to employees and their communities.

It's feasible to not simply cut costs wherever possible to survive another day but, instead, identify ways to reduce costs strategically with long-term vision for building both customer and employee loyalty. When it becomes an “employees’ market” again, people who have been treated poorly, or who have hard feelings over the way their laid-off colleagues were treated, will leave their employers. And the costs of replacing them will be higher than ever to businesses, because the pool of available workers will be smaller and filled with many people who have been unemployed for longer periods.

Additionally, when consumers at all levels are no longer in a position to have to choose based on price alone, they will choose to buy from organizations that have excellent reputations for being socially responsible to their employees, their communities and the environment. In fact, several internationally recognized brands have maintained their market share due in part to consumer loyalty built on preference for patronizing good corporate citizens.

As with any reputation developed in the eyes of an ever-scrutinizing public, organizations cannot waiver on their publicly professed commitments. Although it’s been said the American public easily forgives and forgets, they may disprove this theory.

So, take this opportunity to revisit your organization’s mission, vision and core values statements to ensure you’re operating, even in the toughest of economies, in a manner you’ll be proud to remember. Optimize this opportunity for reflection and reprioritize commitments to include internal communications, employee relations and CSR, all of which will help your organization maintain, and even grow, its current talent pool of employees and loyal customers.

Tags: economy, Human Resources