Internal Communication

A long “manifesto” decrying efforts at addressing diversity has been making the rounds inside Google via internal message boards and social networks. The author, a male software engineer, argues that there are inherent differences between men and women that account for perceived gender gaps. Thus Google’s Danielle Brown, who took up the mantle of vice president of diversity, integrity & governance at the end of June, already finds herself in a delicate internal communications test.

A few years ago, each of Southwest Airline’s departments used social media in their own way, independent of each other. But the firm quickly moved to create “an enterprise-level function with multiple players and dotted lines back to operational units, while still maintaining a master strategy,” according to Linda Rutherford, Southwest’s CCO. To her, the question of who should own social media centers around how an organization approaches customer engagement.

Hershey is embracing employee advocacy programs as a way to pull back the curtain on life at the company, helping to improve recruitment, retention and reputation. The giant chocolatier has devoted an Instagram account (@HersheyCompany) to celebrate its employees, who in turn use the platform to celebrate the company. Here are some examples of successful posts, as well as four tips to keep in mind when crafting your own advocacy program.

Reality checked in with me recently when a few parents on my son’s rowing team, knowing my affiliation with PR News, asked me to write the press releases for the club. Sure, it’ll be easy,… Continued

When I ask my friends in PR what they’d do with a bigger budget, their first instinct is to smile that “yeah, right!” smile. It’s hard enough to keep the budget they have much less… Continued

In the upcoming Arthur W. Page Society New CCO podcast, MillerCoors CCO Pete Marino talks about the company’s internal video channel MCTV, among other topics. PR News was provided an advance copy. In an interview with us, Marino expands on MCTV as well as what keeps him up at nights.

If the lines between paid, owned and earned media have become blurred, why is the internal structure at most organizations still so linear? In this commentary, Brooks Thomas, social business advisor with Southwest Airlines, argues for a more integrated approach and provides four tips for smaller organizations looking to bust down the silos between those three types of content.

Uber is facing another PR crisis after a June 13 sexist boardroom exchange led to the ouster of board member David Bonderman. This shows Uber’s discriminatory culture is still deeply ingrained at the highest levels, according to Jessica Fish, senior consultant at Leader Networks. And the incident serves as a reminder for communicators to examine their own personal beliefs and workplaces for implicit and unconscious biases about race and gender long before they are exposed in a public setting.

In the course of your career, you’ll have attended dozens if not hundreds of industry events where – if you’re like most human attendees – you’ve exchanged business cards as if by rote, refilled your… Continued

A memo that reads,”For your eyes only?” Not in showbiz. On May 10, Chicago media blog RobertFeder.com leaked a harshly worded internal memo sent by talk show host Steve Harvey to all “Steve Harvey Show” employees at the start of this year’s season. The memo airs Harvey’s grievances around a lack of privacy on set and requires employees to make an appointment with Harvey prior to any direct contact. “IF YOU OPEN MY DOOR, EXPECT TO BE REMOVED,” the memo reads, before listing several other studio locations Harvey claims to be regularly “ambush[ed]” by NBC staff.