Category: public relations

‘Employee Relations’ Should Assume Collaboration, Not Conflict

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This past summer, when most faculty were off contract and not regularly attentive to emails and the administrations of the university, an email went out from my employer to announce a division called Labor and Employee Relations.

A serious business meeting with a man and a woman discussing documents at a conference table.
AI generated image of tense work relationship.

Why labor AND employee? Apparently labor includes unionized segments of the workforce and employees are non-unionized. But they never made that clear.

What is clear is the basis for the Labor and Employee Relations division is predicated on conflict, not collaborative relationships.

The administration set up a new page on the website to explain the distinction between human resources (HR) and labor and employee relations (LER). The distinctions are flawed, and indicative of an administration that perceives an “us-them” mentality with employees. Consider the list of duties of this so-called employee relations division helps with in their own words on the website:

  • “Management of reported policy violations including Standards of Conduct
  • Consultation on approach to faculty and staff misconduct concerns
  • Management of formal complaints and grievances
  • Oversight of workplace investigations
  • Consultation on corrective or disciplinary action
  • Oversight of consistency, and compliance of employee actions with policy and law
  • Labor, grievance, and collective bargaining matters”

The context of this new division is revealing. Earlier this year, several hundred faculty, staff and students sent a letter to the university board stating their dissatisfaction with the president and administration due to lack of respect, inclusion in decision making, and communication. The board responded by extending the president’s contract by two years, three years prior to its current term ending. The board and administration did not see the letter as an opportunity for course correction in process and restoration of relationship. They saw it as a call to escalate the conflict.

This new division was not needed in previous presidential administrations for the entire history of the institution. Now the faculty senate — the institution has a history of “shared governance” and has not had a faculty union — is moving toward a formal vote of no confidence in the president. Union representatives are contacting faculty. The president is on a path to seal a legacy of employee dissatisfaction and conflict and to be a catalyst for the first faculty union at the institution.

All of this could have been avoided had the administration practiced actual employee relations. What they have put forth is not relational at all, it is about compliance and enforcement. In PR terms, employee relations is about building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with employees. It involves actually listening to them in symmetrical fashion, adjusting administrative behaviors and not just monitoring employees. It would  mean working with employees, not seeing them as working for the administration. Actual employee relations would not measure obedience to administration goals—devoid of  faculty and staff input—but instead would measure employee loyalty, retention, morale, and engagement, all scholarly and professional terms of actual employee relations.

But the administration presses on in its arrogance and ignorance of actual employee relations, and the multiple positives of practicing it well. Instead, they double down on bad employee relations by announcing new initiatives publicly before internally. They invite the campus to get to know new administrators instead of them getting to know faculty and staff who have worked at the university for decades and have valuable history, insight, perspective, and proven practices. The descriptions of the employee relations division never mention relationship; instead the key words are discipline, compliance, grievance, policy. It presumes conflict instead of collaboration, and it is a set up for a union mentality rather than a culture of unity.

I was recently at a large community event where I ran into two former presidents of the university. One asked me about how my work is going. The other introduced me to someone else as his former colleague. Both showed a genuine interest in the work of faculty and an egalitarian view of  faculty and administration relationships. Those days are gone. A culture built over decades is being dismantled in a few years.

This is what happens when there are no bonafide public relations professionals advising the administration, when the board chair is a labor attorney and the top communications staffer is also a lawyer. The resulting relationship between employees and administration will be one to endure, not one to celebrate. Employee relations will be contractual rather than collegial, tense rather than productive, litigious rather than legitimate.

Businesses Can Look Up When Looking Ahead

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Purpose statements have been increasingly common for corporations. You would think mission and vision statements would be enough. But with the cultural expectations and social pressure for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA), more companies are going a step further.

A wall sign displaying the purpose and values of an organization, highlighting commitments to honoring God, serving others, pursuing excellence, and growing profitably. The values listed include accountability, consistency, humility, and more.

Whereas as vision is a conception of an ideal future state, and a mission is what a company will do to get there, these are entirely focused on the business. A purpose statement articulates what a company can do to benefit society beyond organizational objectives.

Southwest Airlines has a purpose statement that stresses how the company benefits people by what it does: “To connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel.”

Similarly, Kellogg’s has a purpose statement that connects its product line to a benefit for people: “”Creating better days and a place at the table for everyone through our trusted food.”

These are good examples, but they remain somewhat vague and still company focused. Perhaps that is entirely appropriate. 

But I recently came across an example of a corporate purpose statement that reaches even higher, bringing God into the statement, as well as the concept of “serve” to mean meeting people’s needs and not a product or service for sale.

I was attending the Christian Business Men’s Connection (CMBC) conference, and one speaker with a long history of corporate management shared the purpose of his employer, Coca Cola Consolidated, the larest Coca Cola bottler in the United States. Their purpose statement is:

“to honor God in all we do, to serve others, to pursue excellence, and to grow profitably”

This statement does not back away from the corporate growth and profit objective. And pursuit of excellence is often a management method for motivating employee quality and productivity. But the first two parts of the statement mention honoring God and serving others—definitely going beyond the walls of the company.

It demonstrates a way of looking up when looking ahead.

Some might contend that such a bold faith-oriented statement is inappropriate, given that not all who read this have faith. However, many companies affirm one form of identity or another in their statements and marketing and management. This is a statement of identity with God. I’ve written about the importance and validity of identity with God if there are so many other identities in our culture. 

The executive from Coca Colla Consolidated also pointed out that such a statement is actually not uncommon and in fact goes beyond a statement with their faith in the corporate culture. The company is publicly traded and so investors as well as employees and customers are well aware of the purpose to honor God and not only do not object, but embrace it.

“Many companies have chaplains and other programs bringing the gospel to the workplace,” he said. “The media just doesn’t cover it.”

He noted the values the company instills in everyone to support their purpose include accountability, consistency, courage and conviction, discipline, honesty and integrity, humility, morality, honesty, optimism, respectfulness, and supportiveness. Anyone would be hard pressed to argue with those values. Nor can anyone argue with the success of the company.

I would add one more distinction. Many companies have purpose statements that seem to follow and try to please society, which makes it a cultural statement. A purpose to honor God above everything else is a statement of bold leadership, and as a statement it is divine.  

How University Boards Should be Selected and Act

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Many people do not give a lot of thought about boards, particularly university boards, until there is a crisis. But they are critical to a well-functioning organization whether situations or routine or challenging. 

A professional man in a blue suit gestures while speaking during a meeting at a conference table, with attendees seated in the background.

How people get on university boards is currently at issue in Michigan. A recent article in Bridge about whether Michigan’s governor should appoint board members for all of Michigan’s state universities. This would be similar to most other states. Currently voters in Michigan elect boards members for the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University. Given some issues at those universities such as sudden departures of presidents, and the facts that voters are not informed enough to select university board members, there is a proposal to have the governor appoint boards.

But appointed boards are not necessarily a guarantee of better boards. Some boards can exercise their role more with arrogance than competence. 

This was evident recently when more than 200 faculty, staff and students wrote a letter to the board of the university where I teach. They expressed displeasure with the direction of the university and its current president, who among other things, has never taught a class and does not seem interested in faculty perspective. The board responded by extending the president’s contract three years before it was even up for renewal.

This shows a problem of appointed boards. Candidates for university boards are often brought before the governor from the universities themselves, often with the president’s involvement. This sounds more like perpetuating a cabal than a judicious selection of a board.

In my own research on public relations capacity on corporate boards and nonprofit boards, I grounded the studies on board theory. There are essentially two schools of thought on boards. Resource Dependency Theory says that board members provide resources from outside the organization needed for survival or growth. Meanwhile, Agency Theory says the role of boards is monitoring the executive and acting in the interest of stakeholders, Often organizational boards are a blend of both, providing external resources and knowledge as well as ensuring the executive acts in accordance with stakeholder expectations.

It is clear in the example above from GVSU that the board did not monitor the executive in the interest of the stakeholders. They were more concerned with their personal relationship with the president than their professional responsibility to stakeholders.

My research focused on public relations capacity in board members of both corporations and nonprofit executives. There is, sadly, little evidence of it. Most board members are selected in accordance with Resource Dependency Theory to provide resources other than public relations. This includes an expertise in finance, law, and whatever it is the organization does.

Board members who understand that public relations is not mere publicity but all about mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders would better serve both the organization and the varied stakeholders it must serve. If board members are appointed or elected, they should have a grasp of their oversight role and that the work not for the president and institution but they oversee it to ensure it serves the taxpayers, faculty, staff, students and other stakeholders. 

The focus on relationships is more than a public relations perspective. It is essential to good leadership and management. At my institution, there was a sudden leadership change at multiple top executive positions. I was at a meeting where they introduced themselves and when they started and none had been at the university more than 18 months. I was sitting near faculty like myself who had been at the institution more than 20 or 30 years. But the new executives addressed this by having events where faculty could learn about them. They never attempted to learn about the faculty and how they had contributed to the growth of the university for so long. 

Recently the university had an event at which the current and four past presidents spoke and reflected. The oldest and longest-serving president recalled how he would walk around campus and drop in on offices on a regular basis to get to know people better, learn what they were working on, hear their ideas and concerns. I personally remember that. The culture has changed. A board, especially if a member or two is savvy to public relations, could insist that the president and executive team work harder to get to know long-serving faculty and staff and institutional history before trying to impose their new imprint on the university.

What will be important more than how board members are selected is how board members serve. Also, there needs to be a mechanism not just to select board members but to remove those who do not act in the interest of stakeholders. 

Nonprofit mailings need more quality, less quantity

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The United States Post Office has a nice service called “informed delivery.” People who sign up for it get an email each morning that shows them an image of each mail piece or package set to be delivered that day. It’s a nice heads-up feature for anyone looking for some important mail. As one who uses the service, I find myself often looking at the email and saying “again?!”

A stack of various envelopes, including a white envelope labeled 'BILL ENCLOSED' and several colored envelopes in the background.

It makes sense that an organization will send a thank-you and acknowledgment of a recent gift. It also is to be expected they would ask past donors to consider another contribution. But the frequency of these mailings from individual organizations often exceeds what is reasonable. As a result, the mailings defeat their purpose to generate another response. The likely response to being flooded is to toss or shred the mailing unread in an inevitable “cry wolf” effect.

The frequency of mailings from each organization is made worse by the number of mailings from multiple organizations. I contribute to a number of nonprofit organizations. Of course this places me on their mailing list. But because organizations sell or share mailing lists, or addresses appear in the database of professional mailing houses that serve nonprofit organizations, my name gets added to the mailing lists of organizations I have never given to or even heard of.

This all adds up to a pile of mail, and my conclusion that nonprofit mailings need less quantity and more quality.. Part of my past career doing public relations work for nonprofit organizations included direct mail fundraising letters. So I offer some suggestions as a consumer as well as a professional in this arena.

  • Segment by recency, frequency, and quantity. It is conventional advice that organizations should segment their publics and avoid the folly of thinking there is a “general public”. In nonprofit fundraising, this means having a database and using it strategically. Sending mail, and writing corresponding content, that considers how recently someone gave, how often they historically give, and how much they typically give is just common sense. Asking someone to give when their last contribution has not even appeared on their bank statement or credit card bill is annoying. Taking them off the list for a period is respectful and likely will have more response. A targeted letter to lapsed donors, those who have missed a pattern of regular giving, can also be effective if written well to acknowledge the appreciation of past giving and asking if there is a reason the contributions have stopped. Related to recency is frequency. Some people give monthly, while others prefer to give quarterly or annually. Once organization I support smartly recognizes that I give each July and they send me a reminder appeal shortly before then. Finally, appeals should be written differently to groups of donors according to they amount they have given or have potential to give. A letter to a wealthy individual with check boxes for $10 or $100 is a missed opportunity. Asking for a large gift from someone of modest means will cause offense or distress.
  • Match donor intent and cause. When I worked for an NGO, we allowed donors to support specific staff, projects or a country where we worked. This gave donors more agency and the opportunity to feel more engaged with the organization. It also matched their preferences and considered why the donor gives and not just what the organization needs. If a donor gave to a project that was fully funded, we let them know and offered to return the gift or redirect it to something else of the donor’s choosing.
  • Be a relational vs transactional nonprofit. Corporations that make and sell products or services talk about what type of brand they are. Transactional brands merely offer a product or service in exchange for payment. That’s fine in some product categories and industries. Others seek to be a relational brand, where there are repeat customers who engage with the company in ways beyond a purchase and actually have relationship with company representatives. Some of the nonprofits I support achieve this relational status well. I receive correspondence not from some nameless organization, or even a development director, but directly from a person in the field doing what the nonprofit mission is. Often it was that person and my association with them that encouraged me to give in the first place. But the ongoing relationship also keeps me on the list of engaged supporters.
  • Manage the report to request ratio. I wrote above about the instinct to shred or trash mail from nonprofits who flood my mailbox too frequently. One way to encourage me–and others–to open mail is to ensure that some mailings do not request more contributions at all, or do so subtly. Instead, they report on what the organization has done with the support, in what specific ways have they been accomplishing their mission. There may be some people who give to nonprofits to feel good about themselves and say they support an organization. However, most want to know that their contribution housed the homeless, fed the hungry, established a church, rescued animals or in any other way demonstrate impact. The best way to do this is with storytelling–personal stories where the beneficiaries of the organization’s mission are front and center demonstrating positive change in their lives as a result of the organization doing what it says it does. Direct mail letters can include these stories in a letter, or in a newsletter or annual report. A giving envelope can be included without fanfare so donors can choose to give. But the purpose of such communications on a regular basis should be accountability.

In addition to this advice for organizations, I have advice for people like me who want to support nonprofits but get annoyed by the flood of direct mail funding appeals. People can go to DirectMail.com and fill out a form to be taken off mailing lists. But I would rather have people become strategic donors and reward organizations who do the above.

Essentially, I would encourage people to select a set number of organizations they want to support. Even do what I do and develop a spread sheet. Then indicate the annual amount (or monthly or what makes sense for you) to give to each organization. The total would be your annual charitable giving, which may equal the “tithe” percentage of income that Christians are encouraged to consider when giving. This helps to plan, stay committed to giving, report on taxes if you itemize, and mostly allows you to sort mail and discard organizations you have not pre-determined to support.

Criteria for giving are up to individuals but I suggest the following:

  • Obviously, select thoughtfully the types of causes you want to support. Religious, arts, environmental, political or anything else that means the most to you.
  • Investigate if the organization is responsible. One metric is the percentage of funding that goes to mission vs operations. A good standard is 80-20. Sometimes a donor can feel like they are merely paying for the next package to come in the mail to ask them for more. Guidestar is a good online resource of third-party data to vet nonprofits before committing to giving to them.
  • Do you actually know someone who works for the organization? This is not necessary, but it can help ensure you are entering into more of a relationship than a transaction.
  • Does the organization match what is recommended above in terms of the frequency and contents of direct mail communications?

If all of the above are practiced, I suggest it would lead to less frustrated donors and more effective nonprofits.

Book Connects Theory to Strategic Practice for Public Relations Professionals and Students

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The result of more than a year of work, my new book “Public Relations Theory in Practice: Strategic Applications for Professionals” will be published June 2, 2025. It is available now for pre-order at Amazon (in both paperback or Kindle versions) or the Business Expert Press publisher’s website.

I had worked as a public relations professional before transitioning into a career as a full-time professor. I learned quickly that theory and practice are not disconnected as some assume, but are realistically connected. In my 25 years as an academic I worked to connect academic concepts with everyday practice both in class and when speaking to professionals.

I grew weary over time of the expression “that sounds good in theory, but here in the REAL world….” The fact is, professionals’ experiences are the subject of research, which in turn develops theory. If practice informs theory, it only makes sense that theory would inform practice.

The key benefit to a robust understanding of theory can be summed up in one word: strategy. Public relations professionals speak often of the need to be strategic, a common part of a PR campaign plan is the articulation of strategy. Well, theory is fuel for strategy.

As I note in the book’s introduction, today’s public relations professionals need to account to management and clients for whether they have caused stakeholders to make meaningful changes in their attitudes and behaviors that match organizational objectives. This requires strategy based on established theory that is well-reasoned and tested, not just informed guesses and clever tactics based on individual perspective.

The book is divided into six parts, beginning with a simple explanation of what theories really are, how they are derived, different types of theories, and why they are practical and not mere abstractions. The following parts explain communication theory generally (interpersonal, small group, and organizational), mass media, persuasion, ethics, and theories specific to public relations practice. Each part ends with a series of summative strategic statements that professionals can apply to daily practice.

In keeping with the theme of connecting academics to professional practice, I am grateful to have received testimonials from a respected academic and professional:

“In Public Relations Theory in Practice, Penning does an excellent job providing an overview of the major theories applicable to public relations in easy-to-understand language I am impressed with the breadth of theories that are addressed. The book would be a valuable resource for an undergraduate theory course or as a resource for graduate students when they are seeking theories for a specific study. It would also be a good resource for practitioners preparing for the accreditation exam (APR).”

Marlene S. Neill, PhD,APR, Fellow PRSA 

Professor & Graduate Program Director

Senior Research Fellow, Arthur W. Page Center

Baylor University Department of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media

Public Relations Theory in Practice bridges the gap between academic theory and real-world application, equipping professionals with the knowledge to move beyond instinct and guesswork. Penning delves into communication, media, and persuasion and ethical theories, demonstrating how they can be strategically applied to every aspect of public relations. From understanding audiences to evaluating results, you’ll learn to craft campaigns with a theoretical foundation, ensuring effectiveness and achieving organizational goals. This book is a valuable source of insight and guidance for communicators at all levels.”

Eliot Mizrachi, VP, Strategy and Content, Arthur W. Page Society

Whether you are a public relations professional, student or professor, I hope you’ll find the book interesting and useful.