When you consider all the disciplines and responsibilities under the PR umbrella, it's easy to see how some forms of PR might take precedence over others. But if the here-and-now begs for a push for one specific form of PR, it's how your business structures its internal communications and what programs you're committed to.
PR NEWS looks at five employee programs in a range of industries. In some cases, it is the human resources executive who oversees the program, but in all cases, the communications department plays a vital role. Either way, you're sure to cull some ideas from what The Cheesecake Factory, Hewlett-Packard, Manning, Selvege & Lee, Nissan and Northwestern Mutual Life have done, or are doing, to reach their employees and boost morale:
The Cheesecake Factory
This Calabasas, Calif.-based company employs 4,800 people and as part of its 12-plus employee communications efforts, the company began a "Warm Line" in February 1996.
The line is a 24-hour, 800 number employees can call to voice concerns, suggestions and problems. It costs the company under $5,000 a year to maintain, according to Jennifer Jackson, director of human resources.
The service, a voicemail system that's cleared every morning after a human resources exec logs the calls and decides (initially) how each query will be handled, has become a triage mechanism for tracking such serious internal issues as alleged harassment or discrimination complaints. But it's also become an employee soapbox for much lighter concerns, such as questioning whether company policy allows male employees working in its restaurants to grow goatees, Jackson says.
The line provides for a kind of case-by-case analysis in a forum that's not as rigid as company-wide meetings or as potentially superfluous as staff memos. "From an employee communications standpoint, we've found that the more avenues we provide our staff to show that we have a commitment to solving problems, the less they're going to turn to outside sources, like attorneys," Jackson says.
Hewlett-Packard Co.
HP, which has 114,000 employees worldwide, introduced its Ask Dr. Cyberspace column (which appears in its bimonthly Measure magazine and or can be accessed as a clinic feature on the company intranet) 18 months ago and earned this year an International Association of Business Communicators Gold Quill employee communications award.
What makes the column unique is that it's written to explain technology trends and keep HP employees abreast of how the cyber culture affects the corporate world. Yet it's also meant to debunk industry myths; explain Web nuances; and clarify questions employees might otherwise be too hesitant to ask.
The column, to which employees can submit questions, takes on tricky or touch-and-go issues, such as informing employees that viewing pornographic Web sites shouldn't be part of a daily work schedule. (And information's not couched in a kind of big-brother's-watching-you fashion but rather in an educational way by reminding that companies can track information like this.)
The column is divided between three or four employees from the company's 40-person corporate communications staff at headquarters, according to Kevin O'Connor, electronic media producer for HP. O'Connor said the Palo Alto, Calif-based company began the column with the intent of explaining new technologies and terms: for instance, explaining the difference between the Internet and an intranet.
Manning, Selvage & Lee
PR house Manning, Selvage & Lee, New York, realized that, when it embarked on its new "Preference Creation" vision and changed its company logo, sharing those changes with its employees could set the tone for how the changes are accepted. Execs wanted to do that before the news was widely released to the public and the press earlier this month.
To share the new vision with employees, MS&L hosted events for approximately 300 of its 400 employees to provide them with a metaphorical glimpse at what the new business philosophy stands for.
Employees in eight cities were invited to a store for coffee and to pick out a new music CD (which MS&L paid for). After the employees browsed to make their selections, execs spoke about what influenced their choices and then used it as an opportunity to speak about how this ties into MS&L's "Preference Creation," says Monita Buchwald, executive VP and worldwide director of client services. Employees were also given a new briefcase (bearing the new logo) and a Walkman-type CD player. And at their offices, they were met with new stationery.
Nissan
Nissan Motor Manufacturing's Smyrna, Tenn.-based plant (Nissan Motor Manufacturing Corp. USA) uses its video NMM Magazine to give workers a sense of family that otherwise couldn't be achieved. That's because the plant, which employs 6,000 workers, covers 5.2 million square feet - a distance that's hard to span with conventional employee communications programs like management meetings.
The magazine, which has been used since 1988, is aired on 160 monitors every other Thursday during the start of the plant's two main shifts at areas where plant employees gather at the outset of each work stint.
Two employees spend about two days scripting, shooting and editing the magazine program, which focuses on features about workers who have helped troubleshoot a problem.
"This is a way for everyone to get some recognition and for little improvements to be seen as important as the big, flashy events that the outside world sees," says Vicki Smith, a PR manager there.
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Programs at a Glance
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Northwestern Mutual Life
NML, which employs 3,500 people and is based in Milwaukee, began a benchmark study in 1980 to poll employees to get a "broad look at how the company's communications are viewed" by workers, according to Ted Strupp, assistant director of internal communications.
Since the survey was conceived, the company has used it to provide a baseline of how its primary communications vehicles - its weekly newsletter Coverage; its monthly magazine Pillar; its twice-a-month NewsBreak video news broadcasts and its intranet - are viewed by professionals in house. Three communications professionals handle the study, which was last distributed to employees via inner-office mail at the end of 1996. It takes about two weeks to create the survey (about 45-50 issues/items are explored) and workers are given two weeks to complete it.
An outside firm handles the one-month-long tabulation process for employee-confidentiality reasons and aggregate results are given to NML. With the help of an outside consultant, Towers Perrin in New York, the results are analyzed to determine if any communications overhauls need to be made.
Strupp said the company is able to conduct the query with a price tag that comes in under $25,000, a fee that includes the printing, tabulation and consultation advice. (CF, 818/880-9323; HP, 415/857-1501; MS&L, 212/213-7012; Nissan, 615/459-1400; NML, 414/299-2705)