Category: Employment

The need to balance corporate and personal values

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Last semester in a  discussion about employee relations a student asked me about the situation in which an employee’s values don’t match the company values.

It’s a good question. I think about it personally. I myself have had to say publicly that I get my values from God and not my employer. 

Nevertheless companies talk a lot about their “values.”

The Institute for Public Relations Study recently addressed this question and shared a study on the subject. Of interest is that a third to almost a half of employees, by different age groups, said their company’s values aligned with their own “somewhat” or “not at all.”

My question is “should they?” And if so, what specific types of values?

I would say values should be categorized as collective vs. individual, or organizational vs personal.

Collective or corporate (i.e. any organization, not just a corporation) are universal, related to an organizations mission, and not likely to violate a personal value. Examples of these would be that the customer comes first, quality is job one, we try harder. Values related to how a job is done, operational goals, and organizational culture. 

Personal or individual values are based on more deeply held beliefs associated with an individual’s own identity. These are associated with an individual’s family, ethnic or national culture, faith, and other things that precede and supersede the workplace. Often these values are related to the hot topics debated in society that are not directly related to one’s job. 

So when a company “takes a stand on social issues,” which stand do they take? Are they conscious of the unintended consequence that stand serving as a proclamation to some employees—and other stakeholders—that their personal values-based position on said issue is not valued, welcomed, accepted? Such employees will go from ambassador to stranger, they will go from being proud of their job to seeing it as just a paycheck, and maybe a temporary relationship on the path to something where they don’t feel insulted.

Getting employees to identify with employer is great to some extent. We spend significant amount of time at work, one of the first things people ask you is what do you do or where do you work? I have read academic research about going beyond employee engagement to employee-organization identity fusion. That sounds a little extreme to me, as if a person gives up their individual identity in order to blend into a workplace. That is more akin to an authoritarian regime than the “value” of individual autonomy and diversity. 

Indeed, it is useful to foster a positive culture, one in which employees are engaged, productive, happy and serve as brand ambassadors even beyond the work setting. They can be proud of where they work, and even should be. But a profession and particular job is but one aspect of identity. I would even say it is secondary, marginal, and circumstantial.

Personal identity is deeper, more permanent. You can change jobs, it is harder to change your ethnicity, faith, and other aspects of personal identity. If implied one must do the latter they are increasingly likely to do the former.

The noble thing for companies to do, therefore, is work toward values that are appropriate for the mission of the organization as an aspect of organizational culture. But they should maintain and even be upfront about having institutional neutrality on the topics of our day that reflect a personal value. They should seek with intention a balance of being both non-discriminatory AND non-celebratory of any personal values.

This may be different in the case of small or privately owned enterprises, in which an owner will publicly proclaim their personal values or even make them part of the organizational values. This could be a follower of Jesus Christ or an avowed secular humanist. I’ve seen both. That is up to them. But in either case they will both attract and repel employees on the bases of personal value, as opposed to business metrics such as product or service quality, customer service and others. 

Of course, many non-profits were founded and exist  entirely around a cause that is intimately related to a value that is deeply personal. These could be as disparate as advancing the Christian Gospel or advocating for abortion. Here it would be ethical to be clear about a non-profit organization’s purpose, and it will affect who applies for jobs, volunteers and donates to the organization.

But behind alignment with core mission, neutrality on unrelated personal matters should be an organizational value with which most individuals can agree. I have written about the virtue of neutrality before.  

A term related to values that is expressed often in recent years by corporations and CCOs is “purpose.” Purpose generally defined is beyond mission and considers the positive role an organization plays in society. In discussing this concept at length, Ranjay Gulati in his book “Deep Purpose”  offers a cautionary note that echoes what I have been saying: “Culture should not coerce conformity. It should seek to find an overlap between personal passion and company goals. The best cultures facilitate individuality.”

Gulati also offers prudent advice about articulating values generally and enabling individuals to enact them. This is more like guidelines than rules and can help avoid a corporate value trampling on individual values. Among the many examples in the book he mentions Apple under Steve Jobs: “As we’ve seen, Steve Jobs helped create Apple University with the goal of training people not to think exactly as he did, but rather to understand his guiding principles and mindset and apply them using their own judgment in the leader’s absence.”

My answer to the student in class was brief and basically asked students to consider that there are differences between corporate and personal values. I did acknowledge that it was a good question and I have more to say on the subject. I’ve done that here, and I hope PR and other management professionals will give consideration to the difference.

Gen Z and other new employees need to position between Imposter Syndrome and Dunning-Kruger Effect

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I have been a professor at my university for more than 20 years. My career is older than the very life of my current students. 

In that time I have seen a lot of changes in everything from student attitudes to terminology. While I always favor looking at individuals verses a group identity, there are some common threads in the Gen Z student and young professional. Among them are two ways of thinking: “Imposter Syndrome” and the Dunning-Kruger Effect. They are the extremes on a scale of one’s self-perception of ability in the workplace. 

I would advise Gen Z to adopt Aristotle’s ‘Golden Mean’ and position themselves between these two extremes. 

Imposter Syndrome is the phenomenon where one feels like a phony, that they are in a workplace but really don’t deserve to be there, that they lack skills and knowledge of those around them. 

To this I say to students they need to bolster their own sense of self-efficacy. Also, it is important to remind them that college does not teach them everything. A bachelor’s degree gives students a lot, but it is a baseline. College teaches students how to learn. They must continue this in the specific workplace and industry where they land. I speak regularly to chief communication officers (CCOs) who are describing the next thing they need to learn even after decades of experience. On certain topics I continue to read and listen and learn. So no recent graduate of young professional should feel like an imposter. College graduation is called a “commencement” because it is a beginning, not a final conclusion.

Last semester a good student finished presenting a project to a client and left the room and shouted in the hallway “I’m done with college!” It was a joyous and funny moment. No doubt the excitement and jubilation were well worth it after all the work done. But I said to her, congratulations. Now the learning begins. 

The other extreme is the Dunning-Kruger Effect, in which someone without a lot of knowledge or ability overestimates their competence and proficiency. This is the person who thinks they are too cool for school. It’s the person who thinks a three-month internship grants more knowledge and experience than a 30-year career. It’s the recent graduate who assumes a bachelor’s degree imparts more wisdom and understanding than a PhD. It’s the young person who listens to a seasoned veteran explaining past experience and says derisively “OK, Boomer.” 

As a former colleague of mine used to say about some—not all—students, “they don’t know what they don’t know.”

As I get older, it has been humorous to hear from millennials who used to walk around like they rent the place complain about their new Gen Z employees who seem resistant to feedback, instruction and mentorship. They are getting as little of their own attitude. In one case a mid-career professional told me about a new hire explaining with passion a concept they had just heard about but which was fundamental and already second nature to others in the room.

Perhaps they should have said “OK, Genzie.”

But I also note that the phenomena of Imposter Syndrome or the Dunning-Kruger Effect are not about age, they are simply about change. Individuals at any career stage can change jobs, industries or move to a new city or state. This was expressed in a recent AdAge article about entry level professionals finding a tough job market and seeing their mentors laid off. 

No matter the age or experience, the job market and change makes one “new” in the new context and can generate feelings and manifest behaviors ranging from self-doubt to overconfidence.

In either case, time can “heal” these maladies at either extreme end of a self-perception scale. The one with Imposter Syndrome will soon gain confidence if given good instruction, feedback and support from an employer. Success defeats perception. The individual with the Dunning-Kruger Effect may soon find out they are “not all that” in a performance review, a creative team meeting that doesn’t not rubber stamp an idea, or from some negative client feedback. 

The best attitude for a recent grad and young professional is one of humble confidence, between the extremes. Absolutely they should be willing to speak up and contribute what they know and offer the skills they have. But they also should be open-minded to continual learning and feedback, be respectful of the people who went before them, take advantage of opportunity to try and fail, and expect to be corrected. 

Viral Employee Video and Weak CEO Apology Demonstrate Need to Have PR in the C-Suite

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Right at the end of the past winter semester, a business story broke about a company in my area in West Michigan that had public relations implications. In an employee meeting, the CEO of furniture company MillerKnoll told employees to quit worrying about not getting a bonus when they asked about how to stay motivated. Instead, she implored them to commit to meeting an internal corporate financial goal. 

She famously told her team to “leave pity city.”

An employee had recorded this message and shared it on social media. It went quickly viral, reaching 7 million views quickly with numerous comments. The story earned more media mentions than a typical new product release, including national outlets like the summary with perspective on the incident in the Wall Street Journal as well as a series of articles in local media leading up to a reported apology by the CEO in Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. 

I don’t know if the MillerKnoll PR team was involved or listened to with regard to crafting the messaging for the initial meeting or the subsequent apology. But there are certainly some PR lessons here. 

A primary lesson is that internal communications can quickly go external. MillerKnoll is not the first and won’t be the last to experience a window opened on what they think are internal deliberations. All internal communications should be planned considering the impact on reputation if it is seen externally.

Related, employees can’t be isolated. First, employees are also members of the community and may also be customers and/or investors. Even if they are not, those other stakeholder groups increasingly care about and make decisions based on how employees are treated by corporate management. In a talent shortage, potential employees may wonder if they want to bother applying for a job at a company where the leadership communicates in harsh and insulting fashion.

There is a lot of published advice on executive apologies and lots of research on what makes them effective. Suffice it to say apologies have to be sincere, address the reason for the offense, be meaningful and often action based. In this case, the CEO said she was sorry for how employees reacted—but not for what she said and what that implies about her view of employees and their concerns. This is especially true in this case when the CEO told employees not to worry about their bonus when she received nearly $5 million in salary, stock options and non-equity incentive compensation and other perks, according to the MillerKnoll 2022 proxy statement (see page 32).

The central issue in this whole story is about employee motivation. Employee motivation—as well as retention and engagement—are primary concerns of CEOs everywhere, especially post-Covid. Motivation is not done by chastisement or shame. Making company ‘needs” paramount and diminishing the legitimacy of personal concern is not a wise plan. Asking employees for commitment after negating your own commitment to them is set up for failure. 

At the time this incident was getting social media and news media spotlight, I was reading papers and grading a final exam in my graduate course in Communication Management. I was reminded about some of the readings we discussed in the section we did on internal communications and performance. The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer showed that after the pandemic, employees are considered the most important stakeholder for long-term success, replacing customers, that 78% of employees surveyed have anxiety about losing their job, and 43% say their employer doesn’t take seriously employee burnout. 

The Axios 2023 State of Essential Workplace Communications shows that management and employees are not in sync in terms of how things are communicated to them. 77% of leaders think the communication they provide has the context to help employees do their jobs well, whereas only 46% of employees agree.

One research study we dove into showed a complex model that essentially showed the importance of internal public relations in achieving employee engagement. Briefly, internal communication satisfaction (made up of feedback, information, climate and media) will positively affect both perceived organizational support and perceived employer attractiveness. Those two things are key determinants of employee engagement, which in common terms means employees who work with vigor and dedication. 

Another article we reviewed in a section on communication and leadership demonstrated the importance of a “communicative” leadership style, defined as “someone who engages employees in dialogue, actively shares and seeks feedback, practices participative decision making, and is perceived as open and involved.”

A CEO who pays attention to all of the above would not have had to mention “pity city” in the first place.

Reviewing this situation also made me thing about all of the interesting and practical topics my graduate students wrote papers about. There were papers on executive communication coaching, communication competence, transformational leadership, communication management and the ethic of care, the communication role in organizational culture and employee performance, and more.

All of this shows that leadership is more than having authority and insisting on something. Communication is more than just distributing information. An educated public relations or communications professional should be at the right hand of a CEO to ethically and strategically consider both communications and actions with regard to employees. 

What to ask when hiring a PR employer

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UnknownStudents and professionals often ask me for advice when they are interviewing for a job in public relations. One thing I tell them is that THEY should ask some questions too. Employers often talk about wanting a new employee to be a good “fit,” which often means someone who fits the culture in terms of work ethic, philosophy etc.

Employees about to dedicate the next phase of their career to an organization need to be concerned about fit too. They don’t want to feel limited in what they can do, or worse, feel pressured to do things of questionable professional ethics.

I have witnessed bad fits recently at two levels. One, a very sharp student, left an internship after six weeks and returned to a previous one. She left one office because the employer thought PR was just media relations and not more. The student wanted a broader range of experience to launch her career.

The other example was a veteran PR professional who left a well-paid job as the CCO (Chief Communication Officer) or top PR role because the new CEO did not want to grasp that PR is a management function and not merely a channel for one-way messaging, primarily to customers.

So, in looking for a PR job, how do you interview the employer? There is often that awkward moment in the interview where you are asked if YOU have any questions. Have these, and expect good answers:

  1. How do you define public relations?
  2. Does your company have an ethics code, and which people in particular are charged with being the ethical conscience of your organization?
  3. Where is PR placed in the organizational structure? Does the top PR team member report directly to the CEO or is it to another function?
  4. Who are your stakeholders and how do you currently communicate with them?
  5. What is the difference between PR and marketing in terms of roles in your organization?

I could go on. But the answers, generally speaking, should be that PR is a management function, situated in the C-Suite, with a focus on relationships between the organization and all internal and external stakeholders, which indirectly but significantly drives organizational performance long-term.

If they say anything like media relations, “getting the word out,” “putting us in a positive light” or other minimal or diminished view of the public relations profession, you can reply this way:

“Thanks for the interview. I’ll be in touch.”

Then run. And look for a better candidate for you to devote your skills and passion.