What does the PR department do?

The PR department in a company is responsible for how the organization is perceived by the media, employees, investors, and clients – it consciously builds this image, rather than leaving it to chance. In a small company, this may be one person, in a large one – an entire team divided into media relations, internal communication, and crisis management. Without it, the company only reacts to events when they happen, instead of anticipating them beforehand.

What does the PR department at a company do?

The PR department monitors what is said about the company externally and internally and reacts before a single issue turns into a crisis. It is responsible for relations with journalists, prepares communications, plans internal communication for employees, and ensures consistency in what the company says about itself across all channels – from the website to responses on social media.

This task differs from what marketing is about. Marketing shapes relationships with customers in order to sell a product or service. PR builds relationships with all the groups that have an impact on the company – including employees, investors, government agencies, and the local community – regardless of whether they buy anything. We wrote more about the concept itself in an article. What is PR and how does it affect business.

The company's PR department and the PR agency on the outside

Not every company needs its own internal PR department. Smaller organizations often use external PR agencies. PR agencies – an external team that takes on the same tasks, but without the need to hire full-time specialists. Large companies usually combine both models: the internal PR department knows the company from the inside and reacts promptly, while the agency brings a broader network of media contacts and experience from many industries at once. This arrangement works especially well during periods of increased workload – the product launch, entry into a new market – when the internal team needs additional hands to work without hiring anyone permanently.

Media relations

The PR department is especially responsible for media relations, which in turn have a huge impact on your target group. What activities do these relationships involve?

• preparation of documents explaining important situations for the company,
• providing information about the current activities of the company,
• responding to media inquiries,
• coordinating the conference,
• tracking media relations,
• answering journalists' questions.

Who works in the PR department and what are their responsibilities?

In a small company, the PR department is often a single person who is responsible for everything at once: they write the communications, answer journalists' phone calls, and prepare materials for the internal newsletter. In larger organizations, the team divides roles:

• Media relations specialist – maintains contact with the editorial staff, writes and sends press releases, organizes interviews for company representatives.
• Specialist in internal communication – prepares content for employees, ensuring that important information reaches the team before the media, not after them.
• Specialist in crisis management – creates scenarios for responding to difficult situations and coordinates the response when a crisis occurs.
• Press spokesperson – the official voice of the company in the media, often a person with the authority to speak on behalf of the management board.
• Head of PR / Communications Director – is responsible for the strategy of the entire department and reports directly to the management board.

Regardless of the position, a good PR specialist combines two skills that rarely go hand in hand: precise writing (without the language of advertising, but with concrete details) and composure under pressure when a journalist is waiting for an answer within an hour. This is complemented by knowledge of the industry in which the company operates – a PR specialist in a pharmaceutical company must understand which formulations should not be used in a drug communication, and a specialist in a technology company should read cybersecurity reports with understanding before commenting on an incident.

Tasks of the PR department – list of duties

In practice, the scope of the PR department's responsibilities is broader than it might seem from the name alone:

• Press relations (media relations) – preparing and distributing press releases, answering journalists' questions, building long-term relationships with newsrooms.
• Crisis communication – a previously prepared action plan in case of a situation that threatens the company’s image, and coordination of the response when the crisis already occurs.
• Internal communication – informing employees about changes in the company in a way that builds trust, not rumors.
• Monitoring of the image – tracking mentions of the company in media, social media and search engines, with an assessment of whether the tone is positive, neutral or negative.
• Relations with the local environment and institutions – contacts with government agencies, industry organizations, and the community around the company’s headquarters.
• Advisory services for the management – an assessment of how business decisions (layoffs, price increases, changes in strategy) can be taken outside before they are even announced.

Tools and measurement of the PR department's work

The PR department operates haphazardly without monitoring tools – it only learns about the problem when someone tells it verbally. In practice, at least three elements are needed:

1. Media and Internet Monitoring – automatic search for mentions of the company, its products, and the management team, so that we can spot the problem before it grows too big.
2. Contact database for journalists – an organized list of the editorial teams and topics they cover so as not to send the same message to everyone at once.
3. Calendar of publications and tasks – visibility, what and when it was sent, in order to avoid a situation where two departments communicate contradictory things on the same day.

Measuring the effects of the PR department should not end with the number of publications. The industry standard AMEC (an international association that specializes in measuring communication) recommends dividing into four levels: products (how many materials were sent), publications and reach (how many texts were created and with what impact), audience response (website visits, inquiries), and business impact (sales, candidates for employment, relationships with investors). The advertising equivalent (AVE), which converts publications into the cost of advertising of the same size, is an outdated indicator that AMEC does not recommend.

Where should the PR department be in the company structure?

The PR department works most effectively when it reports directly to the management or CEO, rather than to the marketing department. The reason is simple: Sometimes the PR department has to convey an inconvenient information to the management – that the decision the company plans to announce will be poorly received. If the PR department is subordinate to marketing, such information may not reach the management in time or be toned down along the way.

That doesn’t mean that PR and marketing should work separately. Both departments must know their plans in advance – the advertising campaign and the press release about the same product should be consistent in communication and timing. The disconnect between them is most apparent during a crisis: when marketing continues to broadcast cheerful advertising, and PR explains the problem the same day, the company loses credibility twofold. Regular, short meetings between both teams once a week – even fifteen minutes – usually suffice to avoid such situations.

When does a company really need a PR department?

Not every company needs a separate PR team at the start. Several signs indicate that time has come to change:

1. The company regularly responds to journalists' questions, but it does so on an ad hoc basis, without a prepared position.
2. Employees learn about important decisions from the media before they hear about them from their employers.
3. The company is growing and entering new markets, where its reputation is still being built from scratch.
4. A single incident (a product error, a customer complaint, a data leak) has already made headlines, and the company did not have a ready-made response plan.

In such situations, the company can hire its own specialist, build an entire department, or – most often initially – commission these tasks. PR agencies, which brings ready-made procedures without the need to build them from scratch.

PR Department and Social Media

Social media has changed the pace of the PR department’s work. In the past, a company had several hours before the press release reached print. Today, a comment under a post can spread in a matter of minutes, so the PR department must have a pre-determined policy regarding who answers posts on social media and in what tone – especially in a contentious situation. Not every response has to go through the PR department: questions about delivery or a complaint are usually handled by customer service. But when the comment concerns the company’s values, ethics, or a recurring product issue, the decision on the tone and content of the response should be approved by the PR department, not by a person who happens to be on duty on that day.

A good practice is to prepare a list of scenarios in advance: what to do when a wave of negative comments appears, who has access to the company's account on weekends and after how long the company should respond publicly so that silence is not interpreted as a lack of response to the problem.

Checklist: is your PR department prepared for a crisis?

• Is there a written plan for responding to the most likely crisis scenarios for your industry?
• Is it known who in the company has the authority to issue an official statement on behalf of the organization?
• Does the PR department have access to media monitoring 24/7, not only during office hours?
• Do employees know that they should receive information about changes in the company before the media, not after them?
• Was the emergency plan tested even once in a mock scenario, rather than just being written up and put in a drawer?

The absence of a „yes” answer to at least two of these questions is a sign that the PR department – whether internal or external – needs to update its procedures before a real test can take place.

The most common mistakes in organizing a PR department

• PR without a decision-making mandate. A team that only writes messages that are approved by everyone in turn reacts slowly in a crisis.
• No contingency plan before the crisis. Establishing procedures during a crisis situation costs valuable hours – crisis management it only works if the plan was created earlier.
• Internal communication after external one. Employees who learn about changes from the media lose their trust faster than customers do.
• No monitoring. Without tracking mentions, the PR department learns about the problem when it has already grown, instead of when it is just starting.
• Confusing PR with advertising. The PR department that just repeats advertising slogans loses credibility with journalists – they expect facts and data, not slogans.
• One person for everything without any replacement. When the only PR specialist is on vacation on the very day of the crisis, the company is left without a voice at the worst possible moment.

The PR department at Commplace – how we help

If your company does not yet have its own PR department or if your current team needs support in a specific area – media relations, internal communication or crisis management – see, How we conduct public relations in Commplace. Progress, tasks and indicators are visible in real time on the platform Commwork®AI, Next to the publication calendar and the risk list – the decision is always made by a human being.

It is also worth reading: PR functions in a company, media relations – how to build relationships with journalists and public relations instruments.

Sources: work of the Commplace blog editorial team.