Strategic Communication Analysis of SPH: Crisis Management Essay

This essay critically analyzes the strategic communication plan of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), focusing on a crisis where the company faced significant issues due to poor communication during employee cutbacks. The essay identifies gaps in SPH's existing communication strategies, particularly concerning stakeholder relations, employee communication, and media engagement. It emphasizes the importance of a robust strategic communication plan for maintaining goodwill, trust, and corporate reputation. The analysis includes recommendations for improving communication through social intranet software, virtual meeting tools, and discussion forums. Furthermore, the essay suggests strategies for strengthening the company's brand position and restoring trust with stakeholders and the public. The work highlights the necessity of proactive communication to prevent crises and protect an organization's image. The essay includes references to several academic sources to support the analysis.

Running head: STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
Strategic communication
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
The essay concentrates on the strategic communication that should have implemented by
SPH. The essay initially studies the existing strategic communication plan of the company and
analyses the gap in it. Communication is extremely important in any organization. The
management of every organization should formulate an effective strategic plan with the
stakeholders, with the shareholders and also with the employees. A gap in the communication
can ruin the goodwill of the company and it might lose the confidence of the stakeholders and
they might have a worst effect on the management. The essay includes an effective strategic plan
in order to deal the crisis that has been found in the company. It further analyses the necessity of
having a strategic plan in the organization. The essay concludes with some recommendations
regarding the formulation of few strategies that will help the company in protect the reputation
through any crisis that might occur.
In the given situation SPH (Singapore Press Holdings), failed to maintain a public
goodwill with the key stakeholders. The company faced a crisis where it planned to cut down
employees and it faced serious lapse in doing so. The process locked some 20 employees out of
their computers and they were not informed about their cutback. This was because of poor
communication. The company did not formulate proper communication plan and this resulted in
the loss of many employees and their trust on the company. This acted as a negative aspect in
maintaining the goodwill of the company. The company should have formulated certain
communication plan as it is important to communicate with the stakeholders (Fearn-Banks,
2016).
There are various reasons of the importance of the strategic plans in an organization. The
first and foremost reason for having a communication plan is to inform the stakeholders about
the factors and the conditions of the company. The management must have appropriate

2STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
knowledge and skill to communicate with the stakeholders. Apart from this communications are
important as the stakeholders have all the rights to know about the financial records of the
company, about the health policies of the employees. The stakeholders should be aware of the
human resource policies that are there in the company and along with it they should be aware of
the product development of the company (Cummings & Worley, 2014). The sales and marketing
position of the company should be known to the stakeholders. They should be aware of the
external as well as the internal factors that prevail in the company. The communicators should
communicate the external factors like the economic trends and the business operations in the
market. They should also be aware of the internal factors like the policies related to the safety of
the employees (Parveen, Jaafar & Ainin, 2015). This also includes the forms of leadership
followed by the company. This sometimes includes the transformational or autocratic or
democratic and similar forms. The major reason of a proper communication tool is to make the
stakeholders aware of their targets. It helps to build a mutual understanding between the
company and the stakeholders. For example, many organizations have the system of incentive in
their company. Sometimes this is not revealed to the stakeholders. In this scenario the
communication between the stakeholders and the organizations turns out to be poor. There is
another scenario where sometimes the company takes an important decision like cost cutting of
the employees without consulting it with the stakeholders. In such case there is a gap in the
communication tool used by the organization. To have a good relation with the stakeholders and
the employees who are the pillars of any organization it is extremely necessary to have a good
communication plan (Coombs, 2015).
The present communication plan of the company includes certain gaps. The company
does not follow the media relations, the employee relations, the consumer relations, and the

3STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
relationship with the social media, the government relations, the community relations and the
relation with the investors (Child, 2015). The company has no proper safety policies of the
employees. This is the reason the company has failed to gain trust of the employees. The
company had to the face the lapse in the mentioned scenario. SPH failed to ensure proper safety
to its employees and there was no induction training for it. The biggest crisis was that it failed to
formulate effective tool to increase the sales and marketing and to strengthen the band position
of the company. Ng Yat Chung, however apologized for the lapse that occurred. The employees
were locked prematurely and this proved the fact that the company is not considered about the
health and safety of the employees. The company made no efforts to communicate with the
media and other social media. The company did not make any efforts to protect the corporate
reputation (Chaudhri, 2016).
The company should have developed a proper strategic communication plan in order to
avoid the crisis that has been observed in this situation. The first and foremost tool that should
have been there in the company is the social intranet software (Bryson, 2018). The company
should use the technology that has made huge advancement. This would reduce the
overburdening of the paper work; this would eradicate the lack of a clear appraisal policy. This
further would develop the poorly laid out channels of communication. The channels of
communication would be developed through this. The next communication tool includes the
ezTalks Meetings (Benn, Dunphy & Griffiths, 2014). This would enable the management to
have a face to face meeting with the employees. In this case the company should have used the
source of media in order to convey the customers about their policies. The other effective
communication plan is the discussion forums (Wheelen et al., 2017). This is the most effective
plan that the company should have employed in this case. Before planning for the sudden

4STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
revenue cut of the employees the company should have sat with the employees and they should
have communicated it to the stakeholders and the employees. The quarries of the employees
should have been responded by the management. Discussion forum is an effective
communication strategy (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015).
The company must be aware of their corporate social responsibility and their
responsibility towards the environment. In order to restore the trust of the shareholders and the
stakeholders the company should have communicated it with the help of the media like the
newspaper, radio, the social sites and many such similar forums. The news media would turn out
to be an effective option to convey the message of the company to the people associated with the
company. They should have made special efforts and should have arranged special meetings with
the investors and the financial analysts. A special board meeting should have been arranged by
the company. Apart from this the company should have arranged for some special training
sessions to motivate the staffs and retain them. The company should have informed about the
new innovations brought in the company through some media. This would strengthen the brand
position of the company (Argenti, 2015). The above mentioned strategies would help the
company the communication plan and restore the corporate image of the same. Therefore from
the above analysis this can be mentioned that formulation of a communication plan is essential
for any organization. This is essential for all the components of the company. This can be the
stakeholders, the customers, the shareholders and even the employees.

5STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
References
Argenti, P. A. (2015). Corporate communication. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Austin, E. W., & Pinkleton, B. E. (2015). Strategic public relations management: Planning and
managing effective communication campaigns (Vol. 10). Routledge.
Benn, S., Dunphy, D., & Griffiths, A. (2014). Organizational change for corporate
sustainability. Routledge.
Bryson, J. M. (2018). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to
strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement. John Wiley & Sons.
Chaudhri, V. (2016). Corporate social responsibility and the communication imperative:
Perspectives from CSR managers. International Journal of Business
Communication, 53(4), 419-442.
Child, J. (2015). Organization: contemporary principles and practice. John Wiley & Sons.
Coombs, W. T. (2015). The value of communication during a crisis: Insights from strategic
communication research. Business Horizons, 58(2), 141-148.
Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2014). Organization development and change. Cengage
learning.
Fearn-Banks, K. (2016). Crisis communications: A casebook approach. Routledge.
Parveen, F., Jaafar, N. I., & Ainin, S. (2015). Social media usage and organizational
performance: Reflections of Malaysian social media managers. Telematics and
Informatics, 32(1), 67-78.

6STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
Wheelen, T. L., Hunger, J. D., Hoffman, A. N., & Bamford, C. E. (2017). Strategic management
and business policy. pearson.