CIPR

The Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual movement with the goal of establishing authoritative ethics and knowledge based on an "enlightened" rationality.

Led by an elite body of intellectuals, seven score years of reason and learning progressed Europe and America out of a long period of irrationality and tyranny - the Dark Ages.

To visualise the impact of this movement, take a trip to the British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery. The gallery is divided into seven sections and explores the seven major new disciplines of the age: Religion and ritual; trade and discovery; birth of archaeology; art history; classification; decipherment of ancient scripts; and natural history.

Seven years after the opening of the Enlightenment Gallery, the World Public Relations Forum gathered in Stockholm, with PR practitioners, researchers and educators from every continent taking part. The Stockholm Accords were agreed.

The Accords were developed to demonstrate how communications were significant to any organisation's success and how these communications were based on six major disciplines: governance; management; sustainability; internal communications; external communications and internal / external coordination.

"Only six disciplines" I hear you say? "Where's the seventh?" More later.

On hearing the news from Stockholm; the CIPR advisory group on Employee Communications and Engagement were jubilant; an enlightened body of intellectuals representing the PR community had finally recognised that internal communications is at the heart of any organisation's success.

And then we read the content. Of course the wording could have been far better, but that wasn't the source of our disappointment. It was the fact that internal communications featured separately in two of the six accords, contradicting our strong belief that employee communications should be an integrated function. A belief reinforced by the content of the other four accords paraphrased here:

Governance – empower leadership; manage risk; define values and principles; apply social networking; maintain licence to operate; create an internal listening culture.

Management – effective decision-making; sensitive to the legitimate concerns of stakeholders; listening before making strategic and operational decisions; two-way communication; communicate the value of products/services; issues management.

Sustainability – triple bottom line; engage key stakeholders in sustainability; promote integrated reporting.

External communication – improve relationship with increasingly influential stakeholders; develop skills to continually nurture stakeholder relations; bring the organisation's "voice" to decisions; assist all functions in delivering effective communication; strengthen brand loyalty.

Employee communications cuts right through all of the above. So, rather than play with the wording we thought we would redefine the disciplines.

Content with three of the original six; governance, leadership (not management) and sustainability, we created four alternatives - vision and values, culture, reputation and measurement. Seven major new disciplines of our age that are heavily influenced by employee communications and engagement.

The new enlightenment? I hope so. I just hope it doesn't take 140 years!

Sean Trainor is a member of the CIPR Advisory Group on Employee Communications and Engagement. Following 20 years in the profession in senior communications roles, Trainor moved into consultancy in 2007, supporting major brands on employee engagement. He is currently founder and managing director of Uber Engagement