Akshay Vyas is a professional in marketing communications and in his 17 year experience has been considered a rock star in every one of the three companies he has worked with. About four weeks ago he accepted an offer that was the envy of his friends, from a company in
Attracting and retaining talent is inextricably connected to a company’s reputation. And corporate communications when handled with flair can help create a respected brand image by managing perceptions and building a credible reputation. Corporate communications is no longer about having one or two people write a monthly newsletter – a ‘nice to have’ feature of yester year’s corporate scenario. Today it is about running a successful company, building a trustworthy brand, making a brand promise and living that promise. It is about hiring the best talent and retaining them to build a sustainable long term business ; it is about building trust in the community and a signature corporate culture within the company.
All this is real hard work; a company’s culture and reputation is built over time on confidence and reliability and tremendous effort is required to do this successfully in a sustained fashion with quality and consistency.
A company’s communication strategy should ensure that the dissemination of corporate news is timely, proactive, and effective in reflecting the company’s actions and practices. It should be capable of proactively identifying and managing ripples that have potential to hurt the company. All spokespersons for the company should be trained to speak in the same voice and in order to keep the messaging consistent across all stakeholders – staff, suppliers, customers, government, media, and shareholders – key messages should be developed and endorsed by senior management.
True stories should be told about staff successes, the company’s people practices, employee engagement and development initiatives, and corporate responsibility programs. Such stories will successfully generate goodwill and favorable opinion of the brand both in the community and internally amongst its staff.
If enough trust is built in the brand, a company will successfully sail over rough patches which are bound to occur at one time or another, without damaging its reputation. A crisis communications plan should be kept ready for such times. Transparency and honesty is always the best approach - even in tough situations, but the communication tools should be tailored to suit the specific target audience to ensure there are no gaps in their understanding.
Poor communication practices can not only damage reputation, it can also hurt the company’s performance because of lack of clarity and consistency in what staff and other stakeholders - customers, employees, media, shareholders, investors, government regulators, vendors, suppliers, non-profit organisations and trade bodies - need to be told. Perceptions of this diverse audience should be managed - they play a huge part in building consensus around a company’s reputation and failure to do so, may adversely affect the company’s reputation.
Today stakeholders look for more than profits and service from a company – they look for ethical business practices and a good reputation in the society. There are very many examples of companies that fail to attract, recruit and retain top people or executives due to poor brand image and lack of credibility in the marketplace. In the era of the Internet, it is very easy to find and disseminate potentially damaging information about a company. Corporates that are not adept at managing their communications and those that resort to ad hoc means of managing it, run a very real risk of damaging their credibility and reputation and of losing employee trust in their brand.
