A communication process starts with the identification of the publics that will be addressed, and analysing the potential interests on the issue of the communication helps to identify the publics. Once the objectives of the communication process are evaluated, a further selection of the publics to be involved may be accomplished.
Every company or organization has an infinite number of publics, all different one from the other, and only a clear understanding of the fixed objectives enables to identify the publics involved, case by case.
There is just one kind of public that is present in every enterprise or organization, the internal public. This is often neglected although it is the closest, the most clearly identified, the most stable for its position within the organisation and therefore within the communication process.
However, it often happens that a message - the content of a communication - reaches the internal public subsequently from the outside world, from an indirect source, rather than being directly delivered to the internal public as first addressee.
Opinions and judgements of the internal publics interact with those of the external publics, and the combination of the two identifies the frame of the enterprise’s communication.
The "economic" link between an enterprise and its publics must also be considered:
This economic link is more or less wide and can determine a higher or lower participation and efficacy, more or less flexibility in the dialogue/comparison between enterprise and publics. Due to the deep economic link between an enterprise and its internal public, the internal public appears as the first, the "easiest" public from which a feed-back is highhiobtainable both regarding the definition and analysis of the enterprise or product perception (image) and on the whole communication activity that is carried out by the enterprise.
All communications related to the corporate image of an enterprise or organisation necessarily involve the internal publics.
Considering the corporate image, issues and values (material and immaterial) can be identified, issues and values that belong to a certain target: practically the corporate image is determined by the values belonging to a target.
Looking at internal publics, basically company employees, we find some material values: salary, career, improvement of professional skills, information availability.
Additional immaterial values belong to the internal publics, such as the sense of being part of a team, the attribution of a status, the role and participation in the development of the business and so on.
Considering all these elements - material and immaterial - and handling a proper internal communication, employee satisfaction can be improved, and employee satisfaction is a general objective proper of a mission of an enterprise or organisation, just like consumer satisfaction and customer satisfaction.
For all the above reasons, internal relations must have the same role and must weigh as much as external relations in the communication process of an enterprise or organisation.
Altogether, internal relations and external relations build up the global communication of an enterprise or organization, a global communication that stems from a system of relations with the totality of publics regardless of the nature of their relationships with the company, the business, the product or the service.
Normally, a certain capacity, a certain level of internal communication - more or less planned and formal - always exist and use simple means like meetings or house organs and so on. However, beside this planned and formal internal communication, there is a kind that is informal, not planned, spontaneous, just because some people work together.
Consequently and first of all, internal communication must be aware of how informal internal communication is expressed, on what subjects it develops, and try to re balance the informal internal communication into a formal and planned communication.
