CORPORATE COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO CORPORATE REPUTATION

- Kuldeep Chaturvedi

Corporate communications is the process of facilitating information and knowledge exchanges with internal and key external groups and individuals that have a direct relationship with an enterprise. It is concerned with internal communications management from the standpoint of sharing knowledge and decisions from the enterprise with employees, suppliers, investors and partners. Examples include:

Enterprises use annual reports as corporate communications tools to convey information related to results, processes and relationships of the enterprise. Typically, these communications occur on a yearly basis. Corporations use electronic and print newsletters to share corporate diversity hiring practices and information on new hires.

Enterprises use corporate Intranets to create a corporate communication platforms to formalize processes around announcing requests to supplies to submit RFPs.

In corporate communications the object of communications work is company/enterprise itself as opposed to marketing communications where the object of communications is product/produce or service provided by the company/enterprise. The aim of corporate communications is building company's reputation among its stakeholders (as opposed to brand building in marketing communications).

Corporate communications may include:

Analyst relations

Internal communications

Investor relations;

Corporate governance (communications aspects of corporate governance);

Issue management;

Change management (communications aspects of growth management, mergers and acquisitions etc.);

Corporate social responsibility;

Litigation (communications on/around litigation);

Crisis communications etc.

Companies that strive to be perceived as having a good corporate reputation rightly put great emphasis on introducing policies and procedures that rate them well with key stakeholders - employees, investors and the community.

But simply putting policies, systems and programs in place is only one part of building a good corporate reputation: this will not change perceptions if you do not communicate consistently to your stakeholders and maintain a level of visibility through the media.

There is considerable evidence to support the theory that there is a close correlation between visibility, favourability and reputation.  In fact it is difficult to aspire to be regarded favourably, or to build a reputation, among a wide audience without first building a foundation of visibility.

The reasons why visibility is a foundation of reputation are:

Basic human nature means that we are more comfortable with, and inclined to rate favourably, people whom we already know something about (providing what we know is at least neutral). Conversely, we are often suspicious of, or hold our judgement on those we do not know.  Likewise with organisations - given the opportunity to rate one that is known to us, compared to one that is not, odds are we will favour the one that we know.  It’s an old adage in PR/communication that visibility is closely correlated with favourability in the eyes of the public. This is based on the principle that people - in the absence of personal experience or interface with an organisation - assume that an organisation that is often reported on in the media has justified that coverage because of its importance (or leadership position) in the eyes of the media.

When rating organisations that are known to the public - either because they have public shareholders, have a well known brand, or provide a direct service - there are comparatively few who have the opportunity to directly experience contact. By far the majority of the public form their opinion based on what they read, hear or see. Traditionally, the prime source of this information is the news media.