Family comes first. Within an organization, this idea is true, too. Organizations can include anyone within their definitions of “family.” Moreover, organizations are not only those that qualify as “corporations.” A company’s family could include employees, retirees, business partners, and shareholders. A nonprofit organization’s family could include volunteers, paid staff, and donors. And a professional group’s family would include members of all kinds. For internal public relations, then, telling the family first is primary so the family does not hear about it from other, external sources.
Perhaps this point is obvious, but it is worth reemphasizing because of the immense importance of purposeful, candid, and timely internal communication. After all, defined groups of people are an organization’s family, and that understanding of family intersects with its vision about, strategy for, and enactment of effective internal public relations.
Numerous industry and academic resources explain in various ways that management must value internal PR as a core enabling function. That is, management’s vision for internal PR should be that it is something the organization cannot do without. While working with management, and in full knowledge of what the family wants and needs through communication, internal relations enables family members to connect the dots between what they do for the organization and the organization’s overall mission and performance. In this way, internal PR is instrumental in fostering engagement. The family not only knows how the micro and the macro levels intertwine, but family members can make things happen in the ways they must individually and collectively.
What is vital to recognize is that the vision for internal PR must be in sync with management’s vision and mission for the organization. In this way internal PR strategic planning focuses on those things that foster engagement and, in turn, yields performance improvements. Engaged family members make for a stronger organization in every way, from image and reputation to customer satisfaction and transactions. Family members see consistent internal messages about the organization’s big picture, including messages about its brand, reputation, and performance to outside publics.
Attaining these objectives is possible when a strategy is enacted with the necessary resources and processes for effective internal PR that fit an organization’s mission, culture, and structure. A competent staff and a complement of usable, useful, and used communication tactics are basic to any internal relations function. Also needed is a sensitivity to, and sensibility about the intellectual, emotional, behavioral, and spiritual dimensions of the organizational family. That is, internal PR ultimately will be recognized for how well it enabled family members to think about, buy into, act on, and derive personal meaningfulness from organizational messages about all matters. Simply put, internal PR must appeal well to the heads, hearts, hands, and souls of family members.
Strategic internal communication puts family members first in all purposeful, candid, and timely communication. Organizational success at every level depends on internal PR being valued and valuable at macro and micro levels, including consistency with brand, reputation, and performance messages. What family members know, feel, do, and yearn for within an organization fuels their motivation and engagement. So when anything important matters to an organization, family comes first.
Dr. Pete Smudde, APR, is Associate Professor of Public Relations at Illinois State University.
This is great piece of advice Prof. I am a PR Practitioner and I promise to utilize your ideas to improve the performance of my organization.
I certainly agree that the family metaphor can serve as an excellent perspective for developing internal communication initiatives. And, perhaps I do a disservice to Proesser Smudde in suggesting that the metaphor, as treated, seems designed to capture the heads, hands, hearts, minds and souls (?) of “family members”in order to gain their “buy-in” to the corporate view. In that regard, the notion of relationship, built on identifying common interests and shared goals, seems surprisingly absent. This is not, then, intended as a criticism of a useful metaphor, but simply a reminder of the notion of a shared, mutually-beneficial relationship at the core of all public relations initiatives.
The family metaphor is a great way to help my students remember the importance of prioritizing employee communication. Thanks for the idea!
the concept of family in internal PR,is quite connective, and I love it Prof
Spot on observations and wise advice.