Week 4- Chapter 11 Blog

1. I think the key points to remember from this week's readings were...
- There are two main groups of internal publics that continually need to be satisfied by the organisation, these are the organisation’s employees and the association’s members.
- It is important to maintain employee goodwill as it only takes one employee to be treated harshly and almost the entire organisation will know. Word of mouth is a very powerful communication method and in the case of an unhappy employee, the grapevine operates rapidly.
- There are many tools and methods of communication that an organisation can use to ensure their relationship with their employees is healthy. These include:
· Newsletters and company newspapers: publications that follow the format of the mainstream newspaper or news magazine, however they cater to the specialised audience: the employees.
· Noticeboards: also known as bulletin boards.
· Memos: brief letters that are exchanged by staff on a particular issue.
· Awards: recognising employees for their performance through the use of a certificate, cash bonus, gift, or travel packages.
· Events: socialising with colleagues outside work hours.
· Intranets: network of computers within the organisation.
· Interpersonal communication: face-to-face communication and staff meetings.
- Community relations need to be maintained in order for the organisation to be accepted and supported in society. It is extremely important for companies to show that they actually care about their community.
- There are many approaches to community relations that an organisation can choose to adopt, including:
· Consultation: developing a two-way relationship between the community and the organisation by asking community leaders to participate in the planning and decision making process.
· Scanning the environment: knowing what the community stakeholders are thinking, feeling and doing.
· Filling the gaps: providing as much information as possible to the public to avoid the creation of rumors.
· Collaborations with community groups: audience participation where publics are involved in the communication.
· Negotiation: mutual gains approach is used which involves the values of respect, humility, trust and commitment to a joint solution to an issue.

2. The readings made me think more about public relations theory/practice in that …
Public relations is not simply about organising events and displaying an organisation to the public, but it has a strong role to fulfill in satisfying the internal and community groups. The internal publics are extremely important, as without these people the organisation would not be able to function effectively. There are many different ways that the relations between the company and the employees can be maintained to a high level, many of these approaches should be adopted by a successful organisation.

Community relations are also extremely important as the company needs to be accepted in society and preferably supported by the community stakeholders. It became clear that it is paramount to an organisation that community members are involved and committed to supporting the organisation.