Communicators are enduring increased expectations from business partners, while at the same time facing pressure to cut costs and reevaluate resources. The days of adding staff or increasing agency budgets to address new programs are falling by the wayside. Instead, we’re expected to find more efficiencies in our teams, our tools and our partners.
But what happens after you’ve trimmed your department into a lean, focused machine, yet the requests for help continue to roll in?
In some cases, PR pros are looking outside their own teams for support, readily tapping into the skills, availability and even influence of other functions and individuals within the company.
DEPUTIZING COLLEAGUES
With the rise in social media, a favorite executive pastime is ruminating over the prospect of employees blogging or tweeting information that could be detrimental to the organization.
But flip that notion on its head for a moment. If these suddenly “dangerous” individuals are showing themselves to be semi-skilled communicators, and have some degree of influence with audiences, should we not be engaging them instead?
At Bausch + Lomb —with just two internal communications pros on staff among 11,000 employees worldwide —we’ve been looking to this group over the past two years, asking them to develop copy and video for our intranet and in-house digital broadcast network. The result has been a steady stream of great content.
Externally, some PR teams are putting their colleagues to work as an extended set of eyes and ears, helping to monitor brand and issues conversations.
LOOKING BEYOND
In gaining support from other functions, some communicators will gravitate toward two groups: marketing for external outreach and HR for employee communications. But, don’t stop there:
â–¶ Look to your front-line teams—employees who are closest to your customers—to garner their unique insights in the form of case studies, “from the field” blogs and even hand-held video profiles of products.
â–¶ Engage your manufacturing site leaders, helping them mine and develop story ideas that showcase otherwise-hidden innovative thinking to fellow employees as well as external stakeholders.
â–¶ Partner with departments that communications sometimes avoids: legal, regulatory, finance and compliance. They’re just as focused on protecting the organization’s reputation as you, so pull them into your risk monitoring and analysis programs.
â–¶ Ensure that customer service has embraced its role in responding to social media posts from customers. Help them adapt to this new medium, and shed the belief that communications should “own” social media.
â–¶ Look to IT as your partner, driving more requests for digital infrastructure improvements to them not only for execution, but management.
PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESS
Taking on a decentralized mind-set doesn’t absolve the communications teams from ultimate outcomes. The most effective teams subscribe to a common set of principles:
• Be realistic. Set expectations for time commitments, accountabilities and success among your management, your “volunteers” and your own team.
• Make it easy. Review your processes, procedures, and tools to make it easy for other departments to assist in communication efforts.
• Build capacity. Invest in building others’ communications skill sets, so that your efforts become even more effective over time. Ensure that you allocate time for adequate coaching.
• Involve your agency. Confirm that your agency partners understand they’ll be working directly with others on programs. They must avoid always including a PR team member in discussions.
• Keep in contact. Develop an infrastructure to remain in regular contact with individuals taking on new responsibilities. Simply agreeing to “check in” when convenient tends to result in missed opportunities and the propagation of mistakes.
• Celebrate success. Recognize the contributions of the broader team. This can be as simple as providing a byline on an authored story, or placing “thank you” phone calls each month.
PR AS THE ENABLER
Tapping into existing organizational resources often results in a more nimble, capable communications team. In many cases, it has the added benefit of elevating the stature for the group, showcasing them (and you) as a true partner. PRN
CONTACT:
Mike McDougall is VP, corporate communications and public affairs, at Bausch + Lomb. He can be reached at [email protected].