The importance (and fun) of internal Public Relations

Name: Christoph
Campus: LUCT

Internal Public Relations, the way an organization communicates with its employees, is one of the most important yet often neglected aspects of Public Relations, as we already learned through the previous PR modules in university. 

So how does a PR agency itself handle internal public relations? For my placement at Maisberger PR agency I can say that the company is very well aware of the importance of employee communications and engages in a lot of activities to keep their employees satisfied and ‘happy’.

The first day I joined Maisberger started with a ‘lunch meeting’. This lunch meeting is a weekly activity at Maisberger, where all employees come together and discuss about a current issue, for example about a new client acquisition, about a current PR project the company is doing or just about any topic that is important for PR work in general or the company's work in particular. Because the employees ‘sacrifice’ their lunch time and stay in the office for the lunch meeting, the company provides lunch for everyone. 

Each week, one or more employees of the Maisberger team will prepare the lunch meeting and present ‘their topic’. In the eight weeks I was there, topics ranged from the creation & development process of a new client's website or the strategy behind a social media campaign to the topic of how to pitch to clients in a self-confident way and the presentation of a research study about the upcoming PR trends. 

But more than learning about a lot of interesting things that are useful for your PR work, the weekly lunch meeting was also a great opportunity to get to know my colleagues. As I also mentioned in my previous post, a good working climate and good understanding between colleagues is very important as it helps you to be confident and happy with your own work. Being included in the team from day one made me much more confident in my work and encouraged me to rather ask questions when I faced some difficulties instead of losing confidence and just giving up.

A highlight each year for the whole team is the Maisberger Christmas staff party. I was very lucky to do my internship during this time and was invited to join the staff for the Christmas party, which I felt was really nice from the company since I just joined them as intern. Every year, someone from the Maisberger management team is organizing a surprise Christmas trip for the whole staff. Only the management team knows what place we go to, the rest of the team just gets informed about what things to bring with them and what kind of clothes to wear. This created a very exciting atmosphere in the weeks before the trip, where everyone was speculating about where the trip this year would go.

And this year’s trip was an overnight excursion into the Bavarian mountains near the Austrian border. We had to climb up a hill for about 45 mins in the light of the torches to reach a small idyllic hotel with a beautiful panoramic view of the Alps. Here we had a delicious 3-course dinner, a great entertainment program with traditional Bavarian music and much more. This was a great opportunity to get to know more about my colleagues and it was a lot of fun to spend some time together in a very relaxed atmosphere. 

Below you can find some pictures from the Christmas celebration. It is also tradition that all new employees, trainees as well as the intern ;-) , have to do some entertaining performance for the team. This year, the ‘new ones’ had to dress as Santa Claus (all women) respectively angels (all guys) and sing some popular Christmas songs in a special version for Maisberger. After being a bit worried about my performance, it was actually a lot of fun, as you hopefully can see from the pictures.

So from my point of view, my internship company Maisberger is truly committed to satisfy their employee's needs and can be a leading example for great employee communications. 

What about your placement, did you also feel welcome from the first day or was it more hard for you to adapt to your new environment? Do you also think that internal Public Relations is extremely important for any organization?

Our hotel for the night

                                  The peformance of the 'new ones' dressed as Santa Claus / Angels 

                                                                   (I am 5th from right)

                                         Entertainment program with traditional Bavarian Music