Why Your Public Relations Skill is the Best HR Tool

When someone in your office approaches you and complains about their employee experience, how do you handle it?

Do you know what to do to sort out the situation?

If yes and you already know how to save the day, you’ve just exhibited a strong public relations skill.

If not, don’t fret. We’re here to help and let you know how to harness your hidden PR skills that can help you resolve those kinds of situations in the workplace.

Take note that that’s just one of the things you can easily handle when you get in touch with your PR skills.

Once you’ve mastered this skill, you’ll be surprised how much you can contribute to your company and grow your career.

To start, public relations is basically the process of managing and maintaining the relationship between an individual or organization and their public.

So, now, how does this play a major role in your job as an HR personnel?

Public relations as a key skill in HR

Your department, human resources, has always been a critical part of any company in the world – regardless if small or big business.

Especially with the recent pandemic, you have become even more important due to the ever-changing business landscape.

You probably knew about the Great Resignation that happened in 2021 – this might have been the busiest season in your department that year — which significantly changed the face of the corporate world and shook up the traditional way of how business was being conducted.

Your skill in public relations is put upfront and called to play a bigger role in the workplace.

This helps your company ensure that they are better prepared to face any challenges of the modern business world as you are equipped with the necessary tools to maintain harmonious relationships with the stakeholders, with the management, and with the employees – placing you as both a mitigator and a mediator in the business.

If you suddenly recall how you’ve worked out that event in the recruitment and employment season – the constant communication with the management and the employees, the continuous planning and strategizing in the business – then you’ve just exhibited and proven your PR competence.

Public relations in HR can be further proven beneficial to a business in terms of your capability to further improve recruitment efforts, develop relationships with stakeholders, increase customer satisfaction, and enhance the organization’s reputation.

Public relations and human resources really do go hand in hand and you can see that both roles share primary traits like being likable and approachable.

Both also have shared tasks. To name a few, these may include handling information requests, disseminating information, planning events, scheduling interviews, and presenting ideas and strategies to leadership.

In addition, one of the significance of PR in HR is successfully managing people’s perception.

This is evident when you can frame complex ideas in simple and strategic ways, demonstrate integrity and ethics, earn the trust of the people you work with, persist through adverse situations, and deliver expected results.

Focusing our attention to business matters, this perception management also applies to PR not being solely about upholding a company’s image but also about how it is perceived by its customers, investors, and other stakeholders.

Public relations and employee relations

Employee experience is gained through the combination of an employees’ perception of the company and how they think they fit into it.

They carefully take into consideration where they fall under and take part in the company’s vision, mission and goals – feeling and seeing if they’re aligned with it.

Employees can see whether they can really fit in as soon as they have a glimpse of the company’s culture which can be conveyed by HR within the company through the policies, procedures, programs and special events.

The company culture that will help shape employee experience can also be perceived even before an employee joins the business.

This can be seen through the company’s careers website, job boards and social media, and even responses to positive and negative online employment reviews.

This perception must be managed effectively to ensure the employees get the best employee experience that they can have while they work with you to achieve the business’ goals.

That can also raise the employee retention rate of your company.

This can be achieved primarily through careful planning and delicate employee experience handling.

To sum this up, your PR skill that enables you to exhibit diplomacy, tact, inclusion, and positive energy is needed from the hiring process all the way through to an employee’s last day.

Public relations and the company

The HR department like yours is distinct in every organization.

Not only are you in charge of all of your daily operations, but also maintaining a harmonious relationship between your company and its people.

In terms of the company’s employees, your public relations skill plays an important part in HR’s job because it contributes to how employees will perceive the organization, their colleagues and the leadership team.

A successful HR department must be able to listen and understand their employees’ needs and must be able to address those needs efficiently and effectively – using sound judgment and making decisions that are best for the organization as a whole.

If you have created and organized a program that helped employees feel more positive and motivated towards their work like an employee recognition program, then that’s a proof of success in your department.

You may have saved your company from losing star employees.

This also exhibits the HR department’s feat of connecting with its workforce and quickly resolving any problems.

Now, for the company itself, depending on what field you are in, PR in HR is sometimes exhibited through preserving a company’s reputation and interaction with the public.

This may include building ties with the media, with industry stakeholders, and with other external groups whenever necessary.