This unit provides the learner with the understanding and skills to support active engagement in the process of developing corporate communication strategies.
Organisations today need to plan their communication systems to ensure up-to- date information, knowledge and awareness are always available to all who need them. A corporate communication strategy is the outcome of a strategic thinking process where senior communicators and managers take strategic decisions to identify and manage corporate communications and communicate them to stakeholders.
With or without a formal communication strategy, every organisation communicates with its audience in one way or another. However, to ensure effective relationships with key stakeholders, every corporate organisation requires a dynamic plan that allows it to strategically relate with its customers as well as other key internal and external stakeholders.
Communication is crucial to organisational effectiveness as it is the basis for maintaining pace and of ensuring that change can happen at all levels. It is through the management of sound and coordinated systems of communication that an organisation can integrate its various parts to ensure workforce harmonisation and achieve awareness of its performance.
Effective corporate communication is closely related to the success of the organisation. An organisation’s reputation, survival and success rests on its ability to communicate with the public as well as its own employees and stakeholders.
When effective corporate communications strategies are incorporated into a business structure, regardless of the size of the organisation, the ability to achieve global communication will be strengthened.
Corporate communication is closely linked to business objectives and strategies. It is the processes an organisation uses to communicate all its messages to key stakeholders. It encodes and promotes a strong corporate culture, a coherent corporate identity, an appropriate and professional relationship with the media, and quick, responsible ways of communicating in a crisis. It is essential if organisations are to inform and influence external stakeholders, including their customers, and harness the efforts of all internal stakeholders towards the successful accomplishment of organisational objectives.
This unit gives learners an opportunity to look into the design of a communication system within an organisation such as their own workplace, one to which they are seconded, or through an appropriate case study.
