Public Relations & Corporate Communications

Strong public relations and corporate communications are essential for protecting reputation, building trust, engaging stakeholders, and supporting business growth. In today’s fast-moving environment, organizations must communicate clearly with employees, customers, media, regulators, and the public while managing risks and maintaining credibility. This course provides participants with practical tools to design communication strategies, strengthen stakeholder relationships, and deliver measurable PR impact.

Public relations is the planned management of relationships and reputation between an organisation and the groups that matter to it, such as employees, customers, media, regulators, investors and local communities. Corporate communications brings those activities together so that the organisation speaks with one consistent voice across every channel.

In practice, reputation is often decided in the first hours of an unexpected event: a product recall, a data incident or a critical social media post. Organisations that have mapped their stakeholders, agreed key messages and rehearsed spokespeople respond faster and with more credibility. The course works through this end to end, from stakeholder mapping and message houses to press releases, media interviews, holding statements and crisis communication protocols. Participants also learn practical ways to measure PR, moving beyond counting coverage towards outcome measures such as message take-up, share of voice and changes in stakeholder perception.

Participants complete the course with a draft annual communication plan for their own organisation, a crisis communication checklist with roles and approval steps, and a set of message templates they can adapt for announcements, media enquiries and internal updates.