Crisis Communication

What’s a crisis? A very simple question, with a very simple answer, but unexpected consequences. A crisis is something whose occurrence is unpredictable. It affects a large number of people. It is something hat everyone can relate to. The death of a lose relative, a flood, or tsunami, or even a broken heart – all can become crisis of one’s own life. Organizations face crisis as well. One of the famous examples of a crisis is the Enron accounting scandal, and the J&J Tylenol crisis.
(http://www.jnj.com/contact_us/student/q03.htm)

A crisis can be defined under three broad categories: Natural crisis, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis; Human Induced, such as financial and accounting frauds; and Unpredictable crisis, such as oil spills, the 9/11 terrorist attack, heavy rains causing floods etc.

While all crises are unique, they do share some common characteristics. These are:

the element of surprise
insufficient information
the quick pace of events
intense scrutiny

Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol crisis of 1982 is one of the most famous crises, and is referred to as the “gold standard” of the product-recall crisis management. In late September and early October of 1982, 7 people died after taking the Tylenol capsules that had being laced with cyanide. The sales dropped by close to 90%. But J&J is a highly ethical organization that does not have a mission or vision statement, but has its “CREDO”. Finally, J&J came out of the crisis due to its string reputation as “the caring company”.

A company should always prepare itself for a crisis. The company should always have a plan, and should be aware of the consequences that a crisis would have on its constituencies. The corporate communication department should set the communication objectives for a potential crisis. Different teams should be assigned to each crisis, the department should plan for centralization; should decide what to include in the formal plan, a list of who all o notify in an emergency, like media, employees, crisis headquarters etc. Finally the company should lay down the description of he plan in written.

Following are the steps that’ll help a company to communicate effectively during a crisis:

Step 1: Get control of the situation.
Step 2: Gather as much information as possible.
Step 3: Set up a centralized crisis management center.
Step 4: Communicate early and often.
Step 5: Understand the media's mission in a crisis.
Step 6: Communicate directly with affected constituents.
Step 7: Remember that business must continue.
Step 8: Make plans to avoid another crisis.

Following articles tells us about crisis in different spheres:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3095/is_11_96/ai_n6090416

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_n4_v11/ai_15312599

Crisis is something that can occur anytime, to anybody, anywhere. One should always have a plan for a potential crisis. It’s always clever to have a backup plan. In the end, as it’s said, the show must go on, and so does the business.

Internal Communications

Since beginning, managers and the top management in an organization have always paid attention the “customer care”, and “customer satisfaction”. Off late, they have realized the importance of employees of their own company. Employees have more to do with the success of the business than virtually any other constituency. Watson Wyatt, a famous HR consulting firm did a detained study and found that the companies with highest levels of effective communication experienced a 26% total return to shareholders from 1998 to 2002, compared to a -15% return for firms that communicated least effectively. Employee communication is no longer a “soft function”, but rather a business function that drives performance and contributes to a company’s financial success. In the 21st Century, internal communications is more than just memos, publications, and broadcasts that comprise it; it’s about building a corporate culture and having the potential to drive organizational change.

Today’s employee is a different person in terms of values and needs than his or her counterpart in earlier decades. The workplace of today is also different – tighter staffing, longer hours, greater workloads, and more emphasis on performance are the norm. the increased outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries has filled many employees with feelings, feelings of paranoia, fear, and anger. All these factors are causing employees to look more critically at how senior management is communicating with them, what is being communicated, and whether or not they feel engaged in and aligned with the company’s direction.

Managers need to recognize that if they provide information to employees and also listen to them, those employees will be excited about their work, connected to the company’s vision, and able to further the goals of the organization. The best way to assess the effectiveness of a company’s internal communication efforts is by determining what employees’ attitudes are about the firm. This can be done through a communication audit. Following are the subjects covered in the communication audit:

• Communication Philosophy
• Objectives and Goals
• Organization, Staffing, Compensation
• Existing Communication Programs
• Personal Communications
• Meetings
• Attitudes Toward Existing Communications
• Needs and Expectations

The methodology for conduction such an audit is:

• Hold a Planning Meeting
• Conduct Top Management Interviews
• Collect, Inventory, Analyze Communication Material
• Conduct Employee Interviews
• Prepare the Questionnaire
• Administer the Questionnaire
• Analyze Data
• Communicate Results to Employees

Reference Articles:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_2_22/ai_n13648071

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3072/is_21_219/ai_n9480795

Strong internal communications – fostering increased workforce loyalty and productivity – will thus continue to play a pivotal role in a company’s employee retention and overall success.

21st Century Communication Trends

In the last two decades, the world has advanced tremendously. Due to globalization, the entire world is becoming a “global village”. The 21st century, is an age of techno savvy communication technologies, diversity, and networking. The world is becoming smaller and smaller.

Stephen P. Borgatti identifies five key organizational trends.

Globalization: This is due to reduced cost and improved quality of international transportation and communication; search for unsaturated markets; and exploit regional cost and expertise differences. All this has led to increasingly global sales, manufacturing, research, management, movement from direct exports to having sales offices in different countries to having manufacturing to all functions spread across the globe, and increasingly global labor market. For example, Wal Mart’s global expansion; Sam Walton opened the first Wal Mart store in Arkansas. It then started expanding internationally in 1991 by opening its stores in Mexico first, gradually to Germany and other countries. It’s now coming to India, and has a tie up with Bharti. Their market saturation in USA, led them to globalize. Another example could be of Wipro. It has 26% of sales growth from its global sales.

Diversity: This is due to changing demographics, and globalization of the labor market; leading to workforce getting more heterogeneous sexually, racially, culturally, and individually, etc.; source of both innovation and conflict/communication problems; and a need to cope with different styles of interaction, dress, presentation, physical appearance. For example Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson are leading companies in diverse culture.

Flexibility: This is due to differentiated customer needs -- filling them exactly is source of competitive advantage, increasing diversity in workplace, and increased pace of change in technology and markets. All this has led to organizational systems and processes and people that can respond differently to different situations, fewer detailed rules and procedures, greater autonomy, encouragement for initiative, customizable employment relationships: telecommuting, job sharing, mommy tracks, pay for skills, and lifetime employability, not lifetime employment. Following are the examples; Toyota (systems and processes), Yahoo (fewer rules and procedures), Google (greater autonomy for initiative and encouragement), IBM (customizable employment relations), General Electric (lifetime employability, not lifetime employment).

Flat: This trend is due to need for speed, which makes it helpful to empower employees to make decisions, which means fewer managers are needed; changes in information technology mean less need for the communication and control functions of middle managers; and globalization means intensified competition, which increases the need to cut costs. This has led to fewer levels of management, workers empowerment, and fewer differences in responsibility (not in pay) across levels. For example, Trident group which is a textile company; Intel; Nokia etc.

Networked: This trend is due to new information technologies, especially groupware, client-server, distributed computing, fast changing customer needs and competitor offerings, and more complicated products require better integration of manufacturing, design, and marketing functions; leading to direct communication across unit & firm boundaries, ignoring chain of command, cross-unit team structures, outsourcing & downsizing, strategic alliances with competitors and others, firms that are your competitors, customers and collaborators all at the same time, close coordination among firms (e.g., JIT systems) and information sharing (open computer systems), and across the board contact with customers, not just official boundary spanners, customization & decentralization. For example DELL, for its networking strategies; GM, for its cross unit team structures; FORD, for its downsizing and outsourcing; Wal-Mart, for its close coordination; IBM & WIPRO, for their strategic alliances; and finally Google, Amazon, eBay, for their decentralization.

The following articles tell us about the tremendous growth of technology and globalization. It tells us the importance of the above mentioned five trends and how they are helping in shaping the global economy.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/2000/Summer/art04.pdf

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_n11_v12/ai_17781969

Corporate Communications Relevance

Corporate communication was formerly known was “public relations”. This function, which was tactical in most of the companies basically with the aim of preventing the companies from its external constituencies, like press from getting too close to the management. Thus, the term “flack” came to be used to describe what PR people were actually doing: shielding top managers from “missiles” fired at them from the outside. Hence, they came to be known as the “spin doctors”.

For many years, PR agencies dominated the communications field, billing companies’ hefty fees for services they could not handle in-house. Few large companies opted to work without them for fears that they might be missing an opportunity to solve their communications problems painlessly by using these “spin doctors”.

By the 1970s, the business environment required more than just simple internal PR function supplemented by the outside consultant. As individual corporations and entire industries were increasingly scrutinized and had to answer to a much more sophisticated set of journalists, the old style public relations function was no longer capable of handling the flack. The focus now shifted to structuring new departments effectively to fir the function into the existing corporate infrastructure. In more recent years, the corporate communication function has continued to evolve to meet the demands of the ever-changing business and regulatory environments. The need to maintain a level of transparency has elevated the corporate communication function within companies to a new strategic level. Messages, activities, and products – from investor conferences and annual reports to philanthropic activities and corporate advertising – are mow analyzed by regulators, investors, and the public at large with unprecedented scrutiny. And the proliferation of online communication vehicles, including Web portals, instant messaging, and Weblogs, or “blogs”, has accelerated the flow of information and the public’s access.

Now, one of the problems that organizations confronted in structuring their communication efforts was whether to centralize or decentralize their operations. For example, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) http://www.jnj.com/home.htm, with more than 110,00 employees in more than 200 operating companies in 57 different countries, complete centralization of communications would be difficult, if not possible. J&J avoids centralizing its external communication counsel with a single public relations firm. Instead, the company uses both small firms on a project basis and large, global agencies with resources around the world, amounting to a total of over 20 different agencies worldwide to support various elements of its business.

The umbrella of corporate communication function had nine subsections. These are:

- Reputation Management
- Corporate Advertising and Advocacy
- Media Relations
- Marketing Communications
- Internal Communications
- Investor Relations
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Government Relations
- Crisis Management


Corporations are realizing the relevance of the corporate communication function. The success of a company’s communication strategy is largely contingent on how closely the communication strategy is linked to the strategy of the business as a whole. In addition to thoughtful design and careful planning of the firm strategy, a company must have a strong corporate communication function to support its mission and vision.

The following articles help us get an insight as to how corporate communication and its sub functions have helped organizations overcome hurdles and a continuous growth:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_6_22/ai_n15930866

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_1_19/ai_82353627

Communication Technologies

Communication is a medium through which we share information, our thoughts, views and ideas; and technology can be described as the tool, knowledge or skill that helps in facilitating the communication, making it easier and faster, cheaper and efficient. The medium of communication has completely changed with the rapid changes in technology. The world has become a small place, and sound seems to be traveling faster than light. The underlying factor that is triggering the face pace of the changing world is “communication technology”.

There are various types of communication technologies that we use in the 21st Century; rapid and reliable communications being the key factors contributing to corporate success. In today’s world we use a mix of both traditional as non-traditional forms of communication technologies.

The traditional forms of communication, is foremost personally, which includes face-to-face, talking, body language; then comes the press, like press releases in news papers, magazines etc.; telephone; television, such as news which is a source of communication that reaches to mass audience.

The latest forms of communication are more technology based. They include, cell phones; the World Wide Web (www), internet, emails, blogs, wiki, chats; wireless communication (Wi-Fi); fax; digital television, satellite television, radio broadcasting, video conferencing; blackberry and PDA; Podcasting (audio) and Vodcasting (video); and last but not the least, intranet.

Of the new technologies, internet is the one which has transformed social and business ways of communication drastically. Internet has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of communication by eliminating distant and time barriers. It is a medium that allows computer to share information worldwide in many areas such as business and education. It has strong impact on communication practices and will continue to be stronger as more and more people are subscribing to this communication channel.

Blog is like a journal which combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic which can be displayed in an attracting manner, and can be viewed by anyone. Today, where more than 90% of the population just googles any information they want, blogs give an excellent example for the same.

Blackberries are small handheld devices that combine the functions of cell phones and PDAs. There is no need for carrying a laptop if someone has a Blackberry.

Podcasting (audio) and Vodcasting (video): include audio and video files which are stored on a server. The user has to subscribe to the categories which are relevant to him and can download the files. Then, he can listen or watch the message. It is a convenient form of corporate communications. Headphones should be used by all employees who listen of watch these media files on their desks to avoid disturbing their neighbors.
Intranet: The organizations are making extensive use of private organization networks (VPN’s), using internet protocols, network connections to share information securely and communicate in a safe and secure mode.

The following articles show the importance of technology in communications:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_3_22/ai_n14730061

http://infodev.org/en/Publication.17.html

Latest technologies in communication are imperative, and that we have got to know from the above mentioned articles also. During my internship at JJMI, I saw a lot of these latest technologies being used. I was in the main head office of J&J, which had all the three divisions, Consumers Products, Medical, and Pharma. In such a huge organization, with so many employees, it’s essential to have an advanced and fast communication network. The entire company was linked with intranet. Almost all the employees had blackberries as they had to go field jobs, and so to be updated with all the mails. Everyone was provided with a laptop, including me; and also given cell phones by the company itself so that each and every employee of the company is accessible whenever required.

In the end, I would conclude all this by saying that, wherever there is a technology, there is always a flaw.

Media Relations

Media Relations, the new name that everyone associates with the “Public Relations”. Media Relations is one of the most critical areas in the field of corporate communication. Media is both a constituency as well as a conduit through which investors, suppliers, retailers, and consumers receive information about and develop images of company. The media’s role as disseminator of information to a firm’s key constituencies has gained increasing importance over the years.

The main goals of the media relations are to create, maintain, and protect the organization’s reputation, to enhance its prestige, and to present a favorable image. Media relation involves product, public, employee, financial, community, government and political relations, consumer education, and crisis communication. It deals with issues rather than specifically with products or services. It involves two-way communication between an organization and its public. Moreover, media relation requires listening to the constituencies on which an organization depends and then it analyzes and understands the attitudes toward and behaviors of those audiences. Only then, can organizations undertake effective public relations campaigns.
The news media are omnipresent in our society. The arrival of television moved the “headline news” that had formerly been found in newspapers to a new, nearly instantaneous medium. With the advent to television and tremendous growth in internet, the importance of print media is slowly disappearing. Today, with the World Wide Web (WWW), almost anything you want, or need to find about, you can Google it, and get it. The oldest tool of media is referred to as “press” in earlier times. Media is expanding and becoming a powerful part of the society. It’s entering not only into the public lives of people, but also their private lives. Even politicians believe that the media bring world of politics into the home of the average citizen.


Businesses have always had an antagonistic relationship with the press. Later, due to a number of developments, including laws governing the disclosure of certain information by companies at regular levels, and more media interest in business, the companies were forced to rethink this isolationist approach. Even today, some older business professionals resist accepting the importance of communicating through the media and would rather maintain little or no relationship with what they see as an institution that tries to tear down everything they build up. This kind of attitude is increasingly risky, and less common, however, as each industry – from oil and gas, to financial services, to pharmaceuticals – has found itself the subject of some level of scrutiny from the public and the media, and many companies have learned the head what that having poor or nonexistent relationships with the media in these situations will only make them worse.

As the public attitudes are changing, the business news sections in newspapers gained recognition and began to expand. Since the media are interested in satisfying the needs of readers and viewers, they had to meet the public’s growing interest in the private sector and its participants. By 2005, the impulse for more transparency and great reporting on business had morphed into a growing movement toward making journalism more transparent and treating the public as a partner in the process rather than a passive participant. The rise of online news from nontraditional sources in the form of bloggers is further proof of this trend and lends further support for corporation developing a thoughtful approach to its media relations with both traditional and nontraditional media.

It’s becoming imperative for the organizations to realize the importance of media, and build better and stronger relations with them. To achieve this organizations must take time to cultivate relationships with the right people in the media and should try avoiding falling into some of the common pitfalls, of what has historically been media relations “standard practice”. In a cluttered field of information coming from a variety of sources, most of the times what works nest for a company is to find out the right journalists for a given story.

Building and maintaining close relationships is a prerequisite for generating coverage. A company cannot simply turn on and off a relationship as and when is faces crisis. Instead firms need to work and develop long term relationships with the right kind of journalists that are industry specific.

A company should take following steps to build a successful Media Relations Program:
Involve Media Relations Personnel in Strategy
Develop In-House Capabilities
Use Outside Counsel Sparingly

The Internet Age has many implications for business; wireless communication and the net have transferred an enormous amount of power into the hands of individuals. In line with this, companies’ media strategies need to be augmented with tactics for dealing with this new dimension of coverage, including, for instance, establishing a forum for constituencies to share opinions, concerns, and complaints about the company, and a proactive effort to monitor information circulating about the company in various media channels including blogs.

Companies should view the internet as an unprecedented and ideal survey group. Online monitoring can help companies gauge the sentiments of constituencies, allow them to respond effectively and help them stay on top of today’s information surge. Hence, companies should not become so consumed by the power of the internet that they neglect other important media channels.

Here are a couple of articles that tells us the importance of PR in shaping the perceptions of the WWW and the media relations:

http://homepages.udayton.edu/~vorvormz/files/491/InternetPR_coursesite/readings/01_NewlandHil_White_2000.pdf

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_1_19/ai_82353625

Corporate & Product Advertising

The advertising industry is large and growing. Advertising is paid, one-way communication through a medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. Variations include publicity, public relations, product placement, sponsorship, underwriting, and sales promotion. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, and billboards. Advertisements can also be seen on the seats of grocery carts, on the walls of an airport walkway, on the sides of buses, heard in telephone hold messages and in-store PA systems. Advertisements are usually placed anywhere an audience can easily and/or frequently access visuals and/or audio, especially on clothing.
From my study of the chapter and the articles on web, I feel corporate and product advertising can be directly correlated to “Employer Branding” and “Consumer Branding”.

“Employer Branding is the process of discovery, analysis, definition, and communication of the employer’s unique assets.”
----------------- Jo Bredwell
JWT Specialized Communications

Employer Branding is a concept used in Human Resources Marketing. It is usually adopted by a company to convince their current and potential employee that the company is “Employer of Choice”.

Employer Branding is very much like Consumer Branding. Consumer Branding is building an image of the company’s product and services among the current and potential customers, likewise, Employer Branding is building an image of the company’s organization and its culture among the current and potential employee. Employer Brand like Consumer Brand is an emotional relationship. Here between the employer and the employee and that extends to the company’s stakeholders, the potential employee and the community.

In today’s demographic world, the competition is increasing day by day and eventually becoming tougher. The potential employee, investors etc are looking for companies which have a good brand name and similarly the companies are looking for talented employees. Employer Branding thus gives an opportunity to the company to differentiate itself from the competition.

“Branding is a process for creating an awareness in the community and becoming conscious if who you are?”
------------------ Mr. Kurt Mosley
VP of business development at The MHA group
A health care staffing firm

A successful Employer Branding is one in which the brand of products and services i.e. the corporate branding of a company correlates and is consistent with the company’s brand. Employer Branding is basically attracting and retaining employees. Employers with recognized brands make recruiting easier. But simply attracting potential job seekers is not the motive of Employer Branding. The goals and priorities of the jobseekers should align with the mission, vision and values of the company. Employer Branding is not only recruiting talented employees but also retaining and motivating ideal employees.

“Sometimes employers need a brand, but what they really need to discover what it is. I can remember when everyone said they had an entrepreneurial culture. Branding is not about what people want to hear or the hot buttons with college graduates. It’s about figuring out the realities of your organization and getting to its essence.”
--------------- Ms. Jo Bredwell
Senior partner at JWT Specialized Communications

In a Consumer Branding, the brands are built upon an intimate knowledge of the customers, similarly in an Employer Branding, the company must have understanding of what the current and potential employees want. This can be achieved by communication be it internally or externally, hearing and valuing their opinions, any innovative idea, their problems etc, giving them incentives, perks, by acknowledging them, praising them for a job well done etc.

In a company having successful Employer Branding, each and every employee working there, be it clerk or director or a fresh recruit, proudly says “I work here”. Such companies are referred to as “Employer of Choice”

Successful “Employer Branding” is built not only on the aspirations of a company, but also on its ability to deliver on the promise

“A survey by Personnel Today reveals that HR believes employer branding is vital if an organization is to recruit the best candidate.”

Employer Branding gives an employer a competitive advantage that he has over others in the market. It is a necessity when the corporate branding is declining. Properly planned and executed Employer Branding give reasons to potential employee to consider a particular employer, be loyal to him and stay in the company.


References:
www.RecruitingNevada.com

www.careerjournel.com

www.monster.co.uk

www.PersonnelToday.com

There are three categories of corporate advertising: image advertising, financial advertising, and issue advocacy. Image advertising has the aim to reinforce a company's identity and to enhance its reputation. Especially when structural changes occur within companies, they frequently use corporate advertising to strengthen their identities. Corporate advertising is an efficient tool for changing or establishing impressions about organizations if structural changes have taken place. Further, it allows companies to differentiate themselves from rivals. Companies arrange financial advertising campaigns to make them attractive as investment by enhancing their image in the financial community. Financial-relations advertising try to stimulate interest of potential investors in a company's stock. Many corporate advertisers claim that a strong financially oriented advertising campaign can increase a company's stock price. Issue or advocacy advertising is used by companies to respond to threads exposed by the government or special interest groups. In this case, companies try to communicate directly with consumers, competing with journalists who also try to influence readers with their stories about the companies. Companies dealing with environmental issues use advocacy advertising very often. The companies often react with advocacy ads in the media, trying to convince the public of its environmentally and socially responsible behavior.

The following articles help us understand the difference between corporate branding and product branding:

http://road.uww.edu/road/peltierj/Nurse%20Loyalty/Captivating%20company%20dimensions%20of%20attractiveness%20in%20employer%20branding.pdf

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HNN/is_7_20/ai_n14888086

The 8 weeks internship from JJMI taught me a lot about Employer Branding. The project that I did in those two months was on “How to enhance the brand equity of JJMI, and how would that help leverage the brand equity of J&J”. Through the data collection and analysis I got to know the perceived image of JJMI in the minds of the people, basically the potential employees. All that helped me to get to conclusions and then recommending what could be done to enhance the corporate image of JJMI.

Corporate advertising helps companies communicate their message to a wide audience quickly and efficiently, but at a rather high price. The goals for corporate advertising – increasing sales, enhancing reputation, and attracting and retaining employees – if met, will ultimately improve a company’s “brand”, the employer – employee relationship and the financial situation. Hence, corporate advertising can be a tremendous source in positioning the organization for future success.