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The essence of crisis communications is an ethical approach to the subject at hand – one cannot communicate effectively if language and intentions are laced with insincerity or deliberate deception.
But what happens when the corporate culture is shaky when it comes to ethics? How does this effect crisis communications?
This is not just a hypothetical conjecture: The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation surveyed more than 1,800 communication professionals across the globe on the subject of internal corporate ethics and the results weren’t exactly reassuring.
According to the IABC report The Business of Truth: A Guide to Ethical Communication, nearly two-thirds of companies polled had no education or training on ethical issues and matters for their employees. The majority of the communications professional surveyed were in full agreement that ethical considerations were crucial to the executive decision making process, and that PR relations and communication professionals have a duty to advise senior management on ethical issues.
But then there was also a significant disconnect between theory and practice: 65% of those surveyed received no formal ethics training whatsoever from their employers.
Indeed, the survey’s respondents stated corporate ethical standards was rarely raised outside of the employee guidebooks distributed on the first day at the job.
And this raises a new question: Is there a genuine risk of corporate communications officers working in ethically challenged environments spreading the wrong messages at the wrong time?
“Corporate communications officers don’t set the timbre of the monologue they conduct with the outside world on behalf of their superiors,” observes Dr. Dewi Morgan, visiting professor of communications at the University of Connecticut and author of the forthcoming “Staying Honest in a 24/7 Media Environment” (to be published in 2007 by Beacon Press). “Their words are merely a reflection of the culture where they operate. If the ethical culture within that corporation prefers ‘spin’ to honesty, then the messaging will be warped. And if this takes place during the crisis communication process, it can be seen as blatantly dishonest.”
While no one is specifically blaming the corporate communications professionals for this situation, the PR’s industry reputation in many sectors doesn’t seem to help matters much.
“The general opinion of PR is low,” says Richard Berman, CEO of the San Francisco agency VerbFactory. “Many people look at PR as a way of deceiving the public.”
Berman adds it is incumbent upon the PR professional to ensure they carry the ethical banner. “Being honest in one’s work is paramount,” he says. “If someone in corporate communications acts inappropriately or in a non-ethical way, it reflects badly on the company.”
The problem itself seems to have its roots before the PR professional arrives in the workplace. The IABC research also examined ethics education at the academic level and found that 70% of the respondents either did not study ethics or touched on it briefly at a “basic level” while going for their college degrees. Only 8% of practitioners had “many lectures or readings” on the subject while in school, while 18% took “an entire course on ethics” and 4% had “more than one course on ethics or a specialization” in the subject.
“In this era of corporate scandals, it is vital that employers make it a priority to marry philosophical ethics education with practical and regular ethics training,” says Kellie Garrett, chairperson of the IABC Research Foundation, who adds the new IABC report comes with “an employee training section with workbooks and PowerPoint training modules that can be used by practitioners to ensure that ethical values are embedded into the company’s culture and practices at all levels.”
Yet Dr. Morgan points out this may be an uphill battle for corporate communications officers to fight. “It is very rare for the PR people to have the power to change a corporation’s deeply-ingrained culture, let alone change it for the better,” he says. “Awareness that a problem exists is an encouraging first step, of course. But unless the corporate communications officer is willing to fight the good fight on behalf of ethics, he or she will be stuck at that first step.” |
