A successful leader will invest and increase the amount of time spent on communication issues. Just take a copy of "Fortune," for example, and you'll see executives explaining what their companies are doing. Steven J. Harris
A saying goes that "behind a successful man, there is a great woman." Over time this phrase has had additions, some comic, but none detracts from it. Today, in the business field, it is (and should be) unthinkable that behind a large company with an excellent image in the market, there is no corporate social communicator or -for simplicity- a corporate communicator.
The subject is not new, but it will always be new as companies, small, large, private or public, are born every day around the world. It may be that many of those who join the market have developed a detailed business plan, one in which the figures square wonderfully and in which profitability is expected to be reached within a certain horizon; however, they will most likely run into a wall or a trampoline that has not always been quantified in the Excel sheet: Corporate Communication (CC).
Just as they emerge, as many companies with years of tradition in the market may face an incomprehensible situation: the business is not doing well, their clients do not prefer them as before, or their employees do not work with the same momentum as in the past.
It is precisely in the face of this type of situation when the task of the corporate communicator as an expert in his area and, above all, as a manager of intangible assets of the company and even as a generator of profits, becomes important –and even “discovered”. Specifically, we refer to those assets named: identity, corporate culture, reputation and corporate image; which in turn have a number of "sub accounts" with an added value ignored by traditional accounting and which are managed through the different tools that the CC has.
It is not the objective of this work to collect definitions or concepts that can be perfectly found in the bibliography that exists on CC (for some relatively little, compared to other social sciences); however, when the understanding of the work requires it, we will make use of them.
Our purpose is to transmit some realities, certain guidelines, certain areas of action and even some clues by which this specialized communicator must travel, delve, perfect and even - why not? - investigate.
Point
I believe in God, in the family and in McDonald's but, in the office, the order is the reverse.
According to the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (DRAE), journalism is the "capture and treatment, written, oral, visual or graphic, of information in any of its forms and varieties". And a journalist is the “person legally authorized to practice journalism” or the “professionally dedicated person in a newspaper or in an audiovisual medium to literary or graphic tasks of information or opinion creation”.
The graduate of the Social Communication or Communication Sciences career is usually called a "journalist", when in reality not all of them are dedicated to the tasks that DRAE typifies for the definition of this professional.
In fact, if we go to the definition of a communicator, the Academy says that it is one who “communicates or serves to communicate” and “said of a person with a public activity: who considers himself capable of easily tuning in with the masses”.
The social communicator is all that and much more: he is a social scientist. Their fields of action are so varied, that the universities were forced –years ago- to divide the careers into different specialization mentions, after a period of common or basic studies.
The option or branch, in our opinion, with the greatest professional projection is CC; not only because of the innumerable work niches (which are companies in general), but because of the new social, economic, political and cultural realities that companies must face in the communicational aspect.
In this sense, we understand Corporate Communication as: the information and communication processes of companies, in various areas and with particular objectives, which are designed to transmit a strategic image to their target audiences.
A multidisciplinary professional
Many attempts at communication
are overridden for saying too much.
Faced with a volatile and rapidly evolving world thanks to technology, it is not surprising that the labor market focuses more on multidisciplinary professionals than on those pigeonholed in an area with draconically established limits. There is no university student, or graduate in any career, who can do without the use of computers, the Internet, electronic devices of "x" generation and the support of other sciences to develop in their daily and future work.
It is enough to imagine the legal, religious and cultural aspects that a doctor must weigh at the time of a surgical intervention - to put a case - without leaving aside all the domain of technology and equipment that he must possess.
Today's corporate communicator, while his foundation is communication science, is closer to the role of a business manager. In fact, to face external communication problems, you must have knowledge - or at least you must have not very basic notions - of which are the main business processes in your workplace.
Likewise, to develop an action plan focused on internal communications, you must not only know the language, how to express yourself to reach your audience, but also have knowledge of organizational aspects, of the legal environment that may involve a labor conflict, notions of psychology and business ethics. All this without leaving aside that he is a communicator but - after all - he is also one more worker in the company, whether he occupies an executive or managerial position.
However, the multidisciplinary aspect does not imply the opposite; that is to say, not anyone from another area can, should, or will have the aptitude and attitude to dedicate themselves to these tasks. The belief that the CC area is synonymous with public relations, lobbying or journalists responsible for preparing press releases or internal bulletins contributes to this aspect - which in the long run has a negative impact on the company - when CC is a task complex that requires both conceptual and pragmatic basis, communicationally speaking, but also knowledge of good and bad practices, and corporate experiences.
Identity creator
I sell enthusiasm.
If the company does not have its own identity, it must be created. If there is no corporate culture, that is, a particular way of doing things, it must also be done. If you do not have corporate behavior, one that allows processes to flow, because you have to invent it with communicator criteria, but with a business vision.
The worst identity that a company may have is the one that it does not possess, since it gives rise to the target audiences (internal or external) to form it at their free will or under the influence of the last company-client contact. If this was positive, it may be that this audience remembers it, but there is no one to say that they trust the company. If the last contact was negative, the public will surely refer to the company in a derogatory way and not only will they lose a client, but many potential ones.
Identity has as fundamental pillars the mission and vision of the company. In order for these pillars to be solid and support the future CC process, it is desirable that the corporate communicator participate in their formulation. In the business world, especially in Latin America, we tend to find extensive "missions" and "visions", full of words, of good intentions, with concepts that for many are esoteric, but have no communicational content whatsoever.
The best missions we've read take up just one line and sometimes have words that are counted on the fingers of one hand. The clearer it is said what the company does, what its raison d'être is, the more evident it will be for everyone how to work to achieve the proposed goals.
If there is an identity, the company as a whole will know where it is going. If you know where you are going, it will be easier for the public to decide if they want to accompany the company to that destination. The corporate communicator has to create the identity of the company, even if one is said to exist; since it may be true, but not everyone identifies it and knows it.
Communication facilitator
If an organization works effectively, communication must be done
through the most effective channel regardless of your organization chart.
By nature everyone knows and can communicate. This phrase is perhaps one of the most ironic for a social communicator because it leads him to wonder why he studied the race if this is so. The detail is that not everyone knows how to communicate in the correct way. In this sense, and even more so when we speak of entities as complex as companies, the corporate communicator acts as facilitator of this process: knowing what to say, why to say it, how, to whom and at what time to transmit it.
One of the great obstacles to be overcome by the CC, internally, is the organizational scheme. The more "boxes" and levels the organization chart has, the more uphill the communication work is done. If you add to this characteristic the fact that it is a family business, or a company in which the highest executive manages it as "yours", without delegation of responsibilities, the work is quite a challenge to the imagination.
In companies with the characteristics described above, the owner, the president, the CEO, or whatever you want to call him, is the one who decides everything and how he likes or seems. He may be a charismatic person, apparently hearty, who likes anyone, but is not necessarily a good communicator. This is probably one of the reasons why, in these circumstances, the position of Director of Communications (DirCom) is held by professionals who contribute little to the actual creation of communication assets.
Some authors limit the action of the DirCom to external communication, public image and public relations, leaving aside internal communication and relations with workers, which is completely wrong. Employees are also business communication vehicles with an unsuspected and wasted multiplier effect, so they must be taken into account when designing the Strategic Communication and Image Plan.
The corporate communicator must be the great facilitator of the information and communication processes, both external and internal, and its scope must not be limited. This affirmation reinforces the multidisciplinary character that it must have, in order to be able to relate efficiently to the various areas of the company, both as an executive and as a worker, which will allow him to have a broad vision of the problem to be solved.
Image designer
The improvisations are best when they are prepared.
"A picture is worth a thousand words". Nothing more true for a corporate communicator, understanding as an image the set of impressions, perceptions, ideas, concepts and experiences that the different target audiences form of the company as a result of the information and communication process.
The image is formed through communication, but to communicate, there must be an identity on which to design a strategic plan for the area. This is the only way that CC becomes a business management tool. Otherwise, it will be a document of good intentions, or of isolated actions without foundation, which will generate expenses for the company when in reality the CC is purely investment.
Each and every one of the members of the company, including the highest positions, must have a clear idea of the image to be transmitted over personal protagonists or particular opinions. The communicational policy is that: a policy, that is, the official guidelines that govern communicational actions on company affairs, at all times and for all its members.
An image is generated from a gesture, an attitude, a word, and even a silence. The lack of coordination in the communicational aspect can cause diverse and even antagonistic images to be generated, which result in negative perceptions and a doubtful corporate reputation.
The corporate communicator creates, shapes the identity and facilitates the communications that will convert it into an image. In this sense, he designs the image that all the members of the company will transmit –even to themselves- with their behavior, their corporate culture and the sense of belonging they possess.
Communications with surname
Corporation: an ingenious mechanism
to get individual profit
without individual responsibility.
At the beginning of this work we mentioned the existence of different forms of communication in the company. It should be noted that they are part of the CC, the Organizational Communication and the Institutional Communication, which are generally believed to be synonyms.
Organizational is understood as the inter-communication process that is carried out in companies - that is, internally - through different forms and levels, and whose contents contribute to the achievement of business objectives. Despite its inter-communicational nature, this does not prevent information and communications from transcending the internal business environment, and –in fact- people outside the company participate, which influences it to be confused with the CC, conceptually speaking.
On the other hand, Institutional is the process by which companies inform their target audiences (internal or external) of their reason for being and the role they play in the community and society in general, with a unidirectional, impersonal and non-commercial nature..
On the basis of these details and the concept of CC exposed in the Starting Point, it can be understood why the Organizational and the Institutional are part of the Corporate. Likewise, it is easy to infer why advertising, public relations and other forms of information and communication are other tools used by the CC for the fulfillment of its objectives.
There are many other branches that the corporate communicator should not overlook. In this work, we will especially refer to three of them due to the importance they have acquired in the Latin American situation: Financial Communication, Environmental Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), also called Corporate Social Responsibility.
The financial management of the company cannot be alien to the professional in question. On the contrary, in globalized financial markets, where information is available to anyone, it is essential to master economic-financial concepts, terms and processes in order to transmit them with adequate precision and opportunity. The more transparent the financial information, the greater the possibilities of access to the capital markets will have the companies. Similarly, the more understandable the financial terminology, the greater the public will be interested in investing in them.
Just as quality standards are increasingly demanded in the business environment, the environmental issue is recurring. The ISO 14000 standards, regarding the environment, should not be unknown by the corporate communicator, both for internal and external application. Despite the fact that these regulations are for voluntary use, in recent years the number of companies that condition their relationships with others has increased according to adherence to regulations in this field.
Finally, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) bases its raison d'être on information transparency and is directly related to the others mentioned. International business scandals are a wake-up call for “healthy” companies to dedicate greater efforts to CSR, understanding it as the company's commitment to society in general, beyond being a supplier of products and services. CSR involves the design of programs in the social, educational and economic area, as well as the participation of employees, their families and the community in them, and should not be viewed simplistically as donations that - in some cases - are used as a way to pay less taxes.
A final thought
There are few more fearsome animals
that a communicative man
who has nothing to communicate.
Perhaps the first great task of the corporate communicator is to make those who run the company understand the importance of having a communication culture. The CC is not having a press office in the company. As we said at the beginning, the job of the corporate communicator is to manage intangible assets and contribute to the generation of profits.
However, for now, it cannot be claimed that mathematics, accounting, and exactly what percentage income will increase and when it will be realized. Communication tasks are always carried out in the short term and are constant, but their results are perceived in the long term.
The work of the corporate communicator is misunderstood and undervalued by those who do not use communications as a management tool, and by those who think that the company "walks alone". The day the company "decides" not to walk, and nobody understands why, wait quietly… that you have work to do.
Bibliography
- Antezana Corrieri, Miguel E. Notes on Corporate Communication, class notes.
- Argenti Paul and Forman Janis. The Power of Corporate Communication, McGraw-Hill, New York 2001.
- Garrido, Francisco Javier. Strategic Communication, The Keys to Business Communication in the XXI Century. Edit. Gestión 2000, Barcelona 2001.
- Sanz de la Tajada, Luis Angel. Integration of Identity and Company Image, ESIC Editorial, Madrid 1996.
- The Big Book of Business Quotations. Ultimate Business Library, New York 2003.
- Villafañe, Justo. Professional management of the corporate image. Pirámide Editions, Madrid 1999.
Published in «Comunicación» Magazine, No. 132, Fourth quarter 2005.
Gumilla Center; Caracas Venezuela.
