Organisations spend copious amounts of resources dedicated to boosting their corporate image. Public relations campaigns improve perceptions about the company as well as entice consumers to buy their products and services. Then public relations and branding firms assist entities to map their brand and the effectiveness of their messaging in the market.
Many professionals remember public relations nightmares such as the massive Enron scandal of 2001.
Enron used to thrive as a prominent energy company in the United States with an extensive international presence.
However, significant alleged accounting fraud artificially propped up the financials and the share price which all got exposed in October 2001.
The company crashed and went into bankruptcy. But the scandal also caught up one of the largest global accounting and auditing firms in the world at the time: Arthur Andersen LLP.
The world watched in disbelief as stories emerged of how Arthur Andersen allegedly aided and abetted in the monumental financial cover-up.
Not only did Enron lose its clients, but so did the once-respected Arthur Andersen. Over a few weeks, major corporate clients announced in droves that they were removing the accounting firm from their audit functions.
The pressure became so intense that the firm’s auditing division collapsed.
Not only did the Enron and ensuing scandal expose huge financial and public relations gaps, but also a much less investigated aspect: employee morale.
Employees of both Enron and Arthur Andersen became extremely embarrassed to work for the entities once the scandal broke and before the businesses folded.
Staff desperately sought alternative employment. Organisational reputation impacts all aspects of stakeholder engagements with a firm.
Turkish researchers Muharrem Tuna, Issam Ghazzawi, Murat Yesiltas, Aysen Tuna, and Siddik Arslan investigate the role that perceived external prestige, or essentially the opinions about a firm’s corporate image affects deviant workplace behaviour. When managing crises, many organisations fail to look at how the external image of a firm impacts the psychological well-being of its employees.
Tuna and the researchers found a direct strong linkage between the perceived external prestige of an organisation and how satisfied employees felt in working for the companies. Then, the employees’ satisfaction levels accentuated their levels of deviance. Deviant employee behaviour is harmful to the working environment and that then leads to workplace aggression, interpersonal conflict, sabotage, and theft.
If we look at our Kenyan examples, Safaricom, CBA Bank, and Mabati Rolling Mills employees often take noticeable pride in working for respectable firms. Each entity enjoys strong corporate images that boost the staff’s perceived external prestige. The higher the prestige, then the employees hold greater job satisfaction. The high satisfaction levels lead staff to display far fewer deviant workplace behaviours.
Alternatively, grocery store chains that faced difficult highly publicised times in the past, including Nakumatt and Uchumi, if the organisations tried today to grow into large operations again, they would likely struggle with substantial deviant behaviour among their staff who feel embarrassed to be associated with arguably low image entities.
What is the corporate image of your organisation? Are your employees proud to work for your firm? Executives should acutely consider the public relations impact of their organisations not only on external stakeholders but also on internal employee stakeholders.
Instead of obsessing only about punitive measures to scare employees away from deviant behaviour, firms must also spend time and resources making workers proud to be associated with the organisation. Thereafter, they will notice significant reductions in workplace aggression, interpersonal conflict, staff sabotage, and theft.
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
