PR Experts Identify Employee Communication for Successful Human Relations
Public Relations and Marketing Communication experts converged virtually on Saturday September 11, 2021, at the School of Impactful Communication (TSIC) platform to discuss the controversial topic “Is Employee communications an HR and not PR function?”
The School of Impactful Communication (TSIC) is a virtual school where PR and Marketing Communication Experts & Scholars exchange ideas, knowledge and experience with the aim of expanding the frontier knowledge in the PR & Marketing communication industry.
The topic was brought to the front burner by the Dean of TSIC, Mr Ayodele Ishola (An awarding winning PR Expert) for analysis and discuss.
Here are some views shared on the platform.
Responding, Dr. Charles Oni (An astute PR expert & Scholar) opined that employees are the core internal publics of an organization and the publics are the people who are affected by the actions and inactions of an organization. He added that such actions and inactions also affect the organization/as a Corporate entity.
He enumerated that, by the nature of employee communication,two paradigms are dominant- Top down which is hierarchical and Horizontal communication.He then proceeded to say that the top down communication is basically the function of HR while that of mobilisation, counselling, celebration/promotion belongs to PR.
A public Affair expert, Babatunde Omisore observed that there has always been battles of turf between HR and PR department but he is of the view that as a PR practitioner, if Public relations is a delibrately planned and sustained effort of a company to maintain good relationship with it’s publics either internal or external publics, then PR department should play a more active role once the conversation is geared towards maintaining good relationships.
Sharing his view on the topic, a veteran PR practitioner & trainer, Dr .Peter Oyeneye (Fnipr) remarked that in employees communications, HR role includes sourcing/recruiting employees, induction of employees at the entry point, in service training, staff discipline, demotion, promotion, general welfare and pension matters but PR is all about communication with the employees to ensure they become good ambassadors of their organisation with a view to positively affecting and influencing the other stakeholders.
Dr.Peter Oyeneye further added that whatever is being communicated by the HR department to the employees is better explained by the editor of the Organisation House Journal which brings similarity between the two department.
Another PR scholar and expert, Dr. Prince Achor, in his contributions said that both functions interface and utilize specific employee communication tools or strategies to perform their functions effectively He stressed that employee relations is broader than employee communications.
Dr. Achor further added that the use of employee communication tools in both HR and PR revolves around the type of strategies and techniques deployed for effective performance of both functions within an Organisation.
The Dean of TSIC, Mr Ishola Ayodele ended the session with a summation that Employee communication is a shared responsibility between HR and PR. Therefore, there should be synergy between HR and PR programmes so as to avoid conflict between the two corporate functions which can negatively impact on the organisations Corporate objectives and image.
