Chapter 11

Internal and community relations are two important factors to public relation. As told in the chapter these two areas are ‘highly valued by organizations’ and considered as the 1st and 2nd priority for public relation for the organization. I would shave to agree with the author, if employees and the audience are not happy with the organization’s work there is surely to be some bad word out about them.

“Trust, honesty and community” are values that public relations need to embrace. It is very important for organizations to communicate with their internal audience (employees) and make sure that they are aware of the happenings. Research has shown that if employees know what they have to do to achieve a goal they would work hard to get it done. On the other hand if an employee has no clue about what they are doing for the organization they would be unhappy and this would act as a major disadvantage for the company. It is not good enough if organizations say that they care for their employees it has to be shown.

The internal publics are known as the organizations employees and association’s members. Organizations have people who are working to achieve the organizations stated goals so if these people do not get credit or get noticed for the job they are doing, they are not going to be very happy. Without them organizations will have no culture and will have a hard time to reach targets in a organized way. Now the employees of a company are not only the full time staff it also consists of the part time members, one bad word from anyone and the company might suffer. This is not just a statement but this has happened before unhappy members of the organization might just go to the press and say something bad or tamper with the products of the company which would result as a major damage for the organization. This can be avoided by circulating information and spreading knowledge to the employees. It is sometimes important to have a good communication with union leaders and representatives. To build a strong relation with employees a key fact would be trust, one way is to communicate the information and another would be to involve them in decision making. With introductions to new technology it has become easier to communicate but seems like the old face to face formula is still the most effective way to communicate. There are also other ways to keep employees happy and informed:
Newsletters
Notice board
Memos
Awards
Events
Intranet
Interpersonal communication

Community is also an important part of public relation. If the public is not happy they might not purchase the service or product of that company. So raising community actions groups can work for the community relations program. This can be archived by consultations; here the company would build a two way relation with their community. Another way would by filling the gap by communicating with their audience and giving out information. They would also scan the environment; this means they would gather information on what the community actually thinks of the organization and how they would improve. If al this dose not work negotiation can be use to come to an understanding between the organization and the community.

In this chapter the author was able to show a clear picture as to how important internal and community relations are to public relations. It once again has made me understood that PR is a very vast with many areas to the job but as a PR practitioners it is their job to make sure all is well inside and outside of the company. This would mean to have a good communicative way with the internal and community audience. Like the author has said “strong internal relations will serve to enhance the organization’s overall operations and outcomes.