Strategic Communication Implemented By SPH-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss how SPH maintained public goodwill, or failed to maintain public goodwill, with its key stakeholders throughout this crisis. Answer: The essay concentrates on the strategic communication that should have implemented by SPH. The essay initially studies the existing strategic communication plan of the company and analyses the gap in it. Communication is extremely important in any organization. The management of every organization should formulate an effective strategic plan with the stakeholders, with the shareholders and also with the employees. A gap in the communication can ruin the goodwill of the company and it might lose the confidence of the stakeholders and they might have a worst effect on the management. The essay includes an effective strategic plan in order to deal the crisis that has been found in the company. It further analyses the necessity of having a strategic plan in the organization. The essay concludes with some recommendations regarding the formulation of few strategies that will help the company in protect the reputation through any crisis that might occur. In the given situation SPH (Singapore Press Holdings), failed to maintain a public goodwill with the key stakeholders. The company faced a crisis where it planned to cut down employees and it faced serious lapse in doing so. The process locked some 20 employees out of their computers and they were not informed about their cutback. This was because of poor communication. The company did not formulate proper communication plan and this resulted in the loss of many employees and their trust on the company. This acted as a negative aspect in maintaining the goodwill of the company. The company should have formulated certain communication plan as it is important to communicate with the stakeholders (Fearn-Banks, 2016). There are various reasons of the importance of the strategic plans in an organization. The first and foremost reason for having a communication plan is to inform the stakeholders about the factors and the conditions of the company. The management must have appropriate knowledge and skill to communicate with the stakeholders. Apart from this communications are important as the stakeholders have all the rights to know about the financial records of the company, about the health policies of the employees. The stakeholders should be aware of the human resource policies that are there in the company and along with it they should be aware of the product development of the company (Cummings Worley, 2014). The sales and marketing position of the company should be known to the stakeholders. They should be aware of the external as well as the internal factors that prevail in the company. The communicators should communicate the external factors like the economic trends and the business operat ions in the market. They should also be aware of the internal factors like the policies related to the safety of the employees (Parveen, Jaafar Ainin, 2015). This also includes the forms of leadership followed by the company. This sometimes includes the transformational or autocratic or democratic and similar forms. The major reason of a proper communication tool is to make the stakeholders aware of their targets. It helps to build a mutual understanding between the company and the stakeholders. For example, many organizations have the system of incentive in their company. Sometimes this is not revealed to the stakeholders. In this scenario the communication between the stakeholders and the organizations turns out to be poor. There is another scenario where sometimes the company takes an important decision like cost cutting of the employees without consulting it with the stakeholders. In such case there is a gap in the communication tool used by the organization. To have a good rel ation with the stakeholders and the employees who are the pillars of any organization it is extremely necessary to have a good communication plan (Coombs, 2015). The present communication plan of the company includes certain gaps. The company does not follow the media relations, the employee relations, the consumer relations, and the relationship with the social media, the government relations, the community relations and the relation with the investors (Child, 2015). The company has no proper safety policies of the employees. This is the reason the company has failed to gain trust of the employees. The company had to the face the lapse in the mentioned scenario. SPH failed to ensure proper safety to its employees and there was no induction training for it. The biggest crisis was that it failed to formulate effective tool to increase the sales and marketing and to strengthen the band position of the company. Ng Yat Chung, however apologized for the lapse that occurred. The employees were locked prematurely and this proved the fact that the company is not considered about the health and safety of the employees. The company made no efforts to c ommunicate with the media and other social media. The company did not make any efforts to protect the corporate reputation (Chaudhri, 2016). The company should have developed a proper strategic communication plan in order to avoid the crisis that has been observed in this situation. The first and foremost tool that should have been there in the company is the social intranet software (Bryson, 2018). The company should use the technology that has made huge advancement. This would reduce the overburdening of the paper work; this would eradicate the lack of a clear appraisal policy. This further would develop the poorly laid out channels of communication. The channels of communication would be developed through this. The next communication tool includes the ezTalks Meetings (Benn, Dunphy Griffiths, 2014). This would enable the management to have a face to face meeting with the employees. In this case the company should have used the source of media in order to convey the customers about their policies. The other effective communication plan is the discussion forums (Wheelen et al., 2017). This is the most effective plan tha t the company should have employed in this case. Before planning for the sudden revenue cut of the employees the company should have sat with the employees and they should have communicated it to the stakeholders and the employees. The quarries of the employees should have been responded by the management. Discussion forum is an effective communication strategy (Austin Pinkleton, 2015). The company must be aware of their corporate social responsibility and their responsibility towards the environment. In order to restore the trust of the shareholders and the stakeholders the company should have communicated it with the help of the media like the newspaper, radio, the social sites and many such similar forums. The news media would turn out to be an effective option to convey the message of the company to the people associated with the company. They should have made special efforts and should have arranged special meetings with the investors and the financial analysts. A special board meeting should have been arranged by the company. Apart from this the company should have arranged for some special training sessions to motivate the staffs and retain them. The company should have informed about the new innovations brought in the company through some media. This would strengthen the brand position of the company (Argenti, 2015). The above mentioned strategies would help the company the communication plan and restore the corporate image of the same. Therefore from the above analysis this can be mentioned that formulation of a communication plan is essential for any organization. This is essential for all the components of the company. This can be the stakeholders, the customers, the shareholders and even the employees. References Argenti, P. A. (2015).Corporate communication. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Austin, E. W., Pinkleton, B. E. (2015).Strategic public relations management: Planning and managing effective communication campaigns(Vol. 10). Routledge. Benn, S., Dunphy, D., Griffiths, A. (2014).Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge. Bryson, J. M. (2018).Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement. John Wiley Sons. Chaudhri, V. (2016). Corporate social responsibility and the communication imperative: Perspectives from CSR managers.International Journal of Business Communication,53(4), 419-442. Child, J. 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