Reputation has a tangible impact on the success of an organisation. In line with this has been the breakdown of trust in many parts of the business world, often between employees and the owners, C-Suite, board and senior managers of an organisation. Edelman’s Trust Barometer amongst thousands of workers shows upward of a third of them just not trusting their management. A staggering seventy five per cent of respondents are not convinced about the moral standing of their CEOs or owners.
This is a problem because an employee ought to be the most trusting spokesperson for a business in today’s world. As the Edelman research summary states: ‘…as long as employees do not trust their employers, employers cannot trust what their employees say.’
Internal communications and engagement has really come of age and is a strategic and important discipline. Those bosses who say ‘people will do as they are told’ are living dangerously in the past and are laying the groundwork for the failure of their organisations. People need to be engaged, their work lives enriched and their jobs enlarged.
Managers need to energise their employees and individuals need to be made to feel they are more than units of production. Where individuals are given greater defined responsibilities and encouraged to be empowered to make decisions, trust develops, processes work well and operations improve.
Alongside this trust-issue, the ever-growing range of new social media channels is also impacting reputation-factors. We can no longer ‘manage’ the company identity through carefully crafted press releases, product launches and glossy advertising campaigns.
If we abuse our employees and they then relate this on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat, just watch how speedily word spreads. How we are perceived is now a much more holistic concern and no longer the responsibility of only those toiling in the marketing department.
We need those in marketing roles who can cut through all of the mess of doing business and who can tell the organisation’s story in a creative and transparent way, engaging multiple audiences and stakeholders both externally and internally through all the different touchpoints and channels available in the early 21st century. We definitely need talented individuals who can link the gap between what the organisation says and what the many publics understand and think about the organisation.
This however also means the culture of the organisation has to withstand scrutiny; how you, your managers and your people do things, how you react to challenges, how you respond to the little things are now all part of your communications strategy.
One of the clearest examples of this holistic link between reputation and trust happened recently with a group of business owners who were all commenting on how staff at a particular organisation never answered phone calls, hardly ever responded to emails and never delivered promised services on time. Within hours, comment from this conversation had appeared on Facebook and Linked In. And there were far too many ‘Likes’ for any comfort to the organisation concerned.
We witnessed how important reputation and trust factors are in the business world. One can only guess at the relationship between manager and employees in a place where phones are left unmanned and unanswered, emails not responded to and poor delivery against commitments.
How we are perceived in today’s business world is no longer the responsibility of the marketing department. How our enterprises are perceived is the responsibility of every individual. If our managers and employees are not engaged, if they do not feel energised, if they have no sense of career possibilities or job enlargement, if they are not empowered, then they will not trust you.