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Stakeholder Studies consultants help our clients meet management and employee communication challenges, especially in mergers and change programmes where different national, ethnic, corporate and professional cultures can collide with interesting and often painful results.

Internal / external integration
Nearly twenty years ago, Nick Winkfield started to shift his attention from purely external communications to integrated employee / external communications. Study after study had shown that the best efforts of public relations and advertising were negated if the organisation’s employees were ‘off-message’. In recent years the challenge has grown, as restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, and the imposition of continuous change programmes, have taken their toll of employee alignment and commitment.

The global challenge
Globalisation continues to pose questions about cross-cultural management and the imposition of standard solutions throughout global businesses. The benefits of standardisation are easy to see. The problems appear in the recruitment and retention of key staff and, less visibly, in workplace performance. We have seen annual staff turnover levels as high as 45% in subsidiaries of some of the less culturally sensitive multinationals, in some cases driven by poor communications, in others by the efficient communication of unacceptable values and strategies.

Stakeholder Studies consultants have lived and worked in many countries, including the US, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. We know that there is no single answer. But we can help you manage the balance between global and local, to find the best solution for your organisation.

The employer brand
Stakeholder Studies brings to employee communications a wealth of experience in brand positioning and communication, gained in marketing and external stakeholder relations as well as Human Resources. We see the ‘employer brand’ as a dangerous concept if it means a brand that is different from the one that is communicated to external stakeholders. But a powerful corporate brand, with values that are equally motivating internally and externally, is probably the main distinguishing feature of truly great organisations.

We will help you position and communicate your employer brand so that it reinforces, and is in turn reinforced by, your
marketing and external stakeholder communications.

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