HR as PR
Written By Dr Damian Treanor
I need to identify my bias on this topic. I don’t like PR practices within HR, I find it both dishonest and fundamentally ineffective, but frustratingly superficially effective. It looks like it works, and it works for just long enough for everyone to copy it. So like a virus it has become endemic to modern HR practices, and one of it’s biggest flaws. In my opinion.
HR as PR is like renovating a house by just giving it a coat of paint- it looks good, but the fundamental issues remain, and are in fact now hidden and less likely to be addressed. HR as PR is not a formal conscious decision that people choose to adopt. To the best of my knowledge (and googling) I am coining the phrase, so bear in mind this is not a conscious choice that HR professional take.
What is HR as PR?
Lets start with PR, or public relations. PR is a collective set of tools that control and disseminate information and narratives to the public control how they perceive the client. Humans (either individually or collectively) look to process information into stories with good guys and bad guys, and PR looks to influence that processes by either pushing favourable information, or influence the collective to a nature that suits the client. ‘Getting ahead of story’ is a classic PR, spinning the information to suitable explanation of what it means before the collective opinion has formed.
PR as HR is set of approaches, techniques and overall mindset that takes the same approach of PR. HR as PR has four characteristics:
- It recognizes the importance of employee perceptions of the organisation,
- It builds a positive image of the company that is repeated and reinforced continuously in all company information and internal branding,
- It controls the information flowing from the company to employees,
- It stifles and restricts discussion amongst employees, and between employees and the company.
Examples of HR as PR are regular, professional, but heavily censored internal communications, regulation of social media forums, promotion of perceived valued benefits and company purpose to employees, as the immediate rebuttable or deflection of employee concerns. HR as PR is the story that the company is your friend and ally, relentlessly repeated to fill the silence and drown out real discussion. I told you I was biased.
Why it works
Because it’s an easy substitute for the truth, which is almost impossible to know. The ‘truth’ is the status of the workforce; the climate of the workforce is very difficult to measure, let alone manage. So instead is it easy to drive a narrative by filling the conversation with stories, lattitudes, company visions, and internal communications of smiling people holding long service certificates. But:
This doesn’t make people love the company, it just stops them saying they don’t.
Are you making the best situation for your staff to thrive, or are you just trying to convince them that they are?
That’s not us…
Not you? sure? Here’s one way to tell. Are you dominating communication with your workforce?
I’m going to pull out a real grandparent adage here, but it’s one I’ve applied to managers to get them to manage better. '“You have two ears and one mouth, so you should listen twice as much as you talk”. Twice as much can be aspirational, just 50/50 would be good.
So if you feel you’re not practicising HR as PR by mistake, ask yourself if you’re listening, not front-footing the conversation? As yourself:
Can people talk to you about their conditions? Is pay negotiable, or at least something they can raise with you?
Can people talk to you about their problems? Is there an easy way for them to communicate with you?
This second one can be harder, because we think some complaints are all the complaints. Just because one person hunts HR down or engages with the union to address, it’s easy to assume that everyone who wants to can easily do so.
To keep it simple, ask yourself- can an employee talk to you as easily and freely as you talk to them?
Am I strawmaning?
If you’re not familiar with the strawman logical fallacy, here it is in a nutshell. It’s set up a poorly conceived archetype, particularly by including weak and/or extreme arguments, that you can easily rebut. I might be doing this, so let me point out the difference between PR HR is done in moderation, and in excess.
It’s reasonable for a company to put its best image forward. Interviewees put their best appearance for an interview (nice clothes, makeup, sunny disposition) so it’s reason for an organisation to do the same- no one expects a ‘warts-and-all’ interview. Where HR as PR takes it to the extreme is the internal control of the narrative- the suppression of discussion that is not consistent with the preferred narrative of the organisation as supportive.
