Yesterday I blogged about the perception that internal communications can be more credible and trustworthy than external PR. Does that mean CEOs can salvage their damaged reputations by communicating better with employees? That's what Weber Shandwick's Chief Reputation Strategist Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross says today on ReputationXchange.com in an excellent post that gives advice for "reputation repairers looking to mend the good names of companies and CEOs."
"... as
companies continue to announce layoffs, reputations will be built and
destroyed on how well job losses are communicated and how fairly the
process is handled. In recent years, corporate responsibility had come
to mean how workers in emerging markets are treated in the production
of company goods and services. In the months ahead, reputations will be
built on how transparent and fair leaders are in treating their
employees and particularly now, in communicating workforce reductions."
Pointing to evidence that word-of-mouth is the primary shaper of corporate reputations, she also predicts that "companies that listen to and engage employees and customers online will be tomorrow's reputation kings and queens" and states the painfully obvious fact that CEOs are "woefully stuck at the Web 1.0 leve and need to embrace Web 2.0 social media tools to spread their company's merits far and wide."
Her conclusion: "Reputation experts like me have their work cut out for them."
The same goes for internal communicators.
Can you believe what a giant opportunity is sitting in front of us?
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