Corporate Culture Runs Deep as a PR Challenge

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By: Doug Bedell

Now it’s the big banks who are recognizing that corporate culture – shaping and monitoring employee attitudes and values – is a vital business focus. Last year, it was General Motors in the face of its ignition switch trauma. And in 1979 it was General Public Utilities after the accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2.

Why does it sometimes take corporate catastrophe to prompt managers to recognize that how employees relate to ethical values, each other, customers and the public at large, is basic to a sound, self-sustaining enterprise? The question is prompted, once again, by a story in The Wall Street Journal, “As Regulators Focus on Culture, Wall Street Struggles to Define It.” That’s after the 2008 financial crisis, and the Federal Reserve’s annual “stress tests” aimed at avoiding another such awakening.

Public relations and employee communications consultants can help the banks, as some are already doing, with the visioning and training challenges inherent in their new-found awareness of how deeply corporate cultural challenges run.

(Photo: CommLab India, for effective learning.)

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About the Author

Doug Bedell has a background in journalism and PR and is the owner of Resource Relations LLC in Central PA, focusing on organizational and crisis communication. He’s the community manager of SimplyFair.net, a social network on fairness. On the Web, Doug’s at www.ResourceRelations.com. On Twitter, he’s @DougBeetle.

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