Can public relations improve society's wellbeing?

Does public relations contribute to wellbeing? That’s the question on the agenda for this year’s meeting of the International Public Relations Research Symposium held annually in early July.

And it’s a question the meeting organisers believe can broaden the horizons of public relations practice. This is not simply conference rhetoric either. The belief can be supported by looking at recent debates about what is involved in wellbeing at individual, organisational, national, and international levels.

Recent experiences through the pandemic – with the effects of loss, lockdowns, social isolation, disruptions to family and working lives – brought out real concerns for mental health and wellbeing. 

Wellbeing is defined as a state of being comfortable, healthy, and happy – but it’s also broader than a matter of personal experience. The New Economics Foundation’s definition of wellbeing is used by mental health professionals to suggest that “it can be understood as how people feel and how they function, both on a personal and a social level, and how they evaluate their lives as a whole”.

For some time now, measures of wellbeing have been used alongside measures of health and the economy in assessing national wellbeing. However, in many countries, the predominating measure of social wellbeing remains economic – particularly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – and dominates debate about whether a country is doing well.

At the international level, the World Health Organization (WHO) added wellbeing as a new item in its 2021 listing of important concerns in health promotion. The last part of its definition points to the scope for public relations’ contributions:

“Wellbeing is a positive state experienced by individuals and societies. Similar to health, it is a resource for daily life and is determined by social, economic, and environmental conditions. Wellbeing encompasses quality of life and the ability of people and societies to contribute to the world with a sense of meaning and purpose. Focusing on wellbeing supports the tracking of the equitable distribution of resources, overall thriving, and sustainability. A society’s wellbeing can be determined by the extent to which it is resilient, builds capacity for action, and is prepared to transcend challenges.”

Wellbeing and democracy

In public relations practice, we can think about wellbeing for individuals, and in organisational and social contexts.  Again because of the pandemic, a lot of discussion has focussed on the experience of individual practitioners.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), collaborating with the Public Relations and Communications Association, produced a study of workplace mental wellbeing in 2022 as part of continuing work on mental health in public relations practice – seen by the Institute as a “business-critical for the industry.”

Figures quoted in the study reconfirm that public relations is a stressful occupation.  Stress is brought on by workload and working conditions. The report finds that large numbers of people working in public relations experience mental health difficulties, which they cope with more or less well.

Another illustration of the difficulties faced in practice is found in a recent study of communication practitioners working in the NHS, published in the Public Relations Review in March 2024. Professor Anne Gregory and colleagues found that, beyond the demands of dealing with the pandemic, stress for practitioners was caused by management approaches (command and control), uncertainties about work to be carried out, and working conditions.

Focus on threats to practitioners’ wellbeing is – as in the NHS study – leading to recommendations for dealing with them. These relate to managing workloads, and the development of support for individuals experiencing difficulties. There is also a need to prepare practitioners for the stress they can expect in their work.

At organisational levels, there is good evidence that management approaches, commitments to open communication and supportive cultures make significant contributions to wellbeing in the workplace. Here, practitioners working in internal communication have clear roles to play.

A broader question for public relations practice is does it (and can it) contribute to social wellbeing? This is a timely question, in a year which has been described by the Carnegie Trust UK as a landmark year for democracy, when more than 4 billion people in more than 50 countries will vote to elect their leaders and representatives, including in the EU, India, the USA and possibly the UK.

The Trust believes democracy is a “foundational aspect of collective wellbeing,” which also depends on:

• Social wellbeing: All have the support and services needed to thrive.
• Economic wellbeing: All have a decent minimum living standard.
• Environmental wellbeing: Living within the planet’s natural resources.

Democratic wellbeing depends on all having a voice in decisions that affect them.

Concerns have already been raised regarding misuse of communication capabilities in political communication and techniques drawn on in public relations practice will once again come in for examination and criticism.

Public relations can be used to foster what the Trust calls collective wellbeing. 

As a practice, it is committed – as its professional associations and many practitioners are – to establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships and to honesty in public communication. It recognises the need to listen to, and respond to the concerns of important groups, and to arrive at good decisions that consider these concerns and wider responsibilities.

Practised in this way, public relations helps to create understanding, grow trust, and to contribute to actions that will solve problems, address social priorities – feeding directly into the WHO’s view of social wellbeing, quoted earlier as “determined by the extent to which it is resilient, builds capacity for action, and is prepared to transcend challenges”.

Uses and abuses

Some of the specific ways in which public relations can make its contribution to social wellbeing include bringing to the attention of leaders, managers, and clients the need to recognise the impact on wellbeing of policies, decisions, and planned actions. Practitioners can be advocates for otherwise unrepresented groups.

They can, and many do, raise awareness of issues bearing on quality of life and social wellbeing, such as issues stemming from the cost of living, shortage of housing and pressures on public services.

Contribution to social wellbeing will also require speaking out against misuse of the techniques of public relations, particularly in a year of elections and particularly in relation to deliberate use of misinformation and deception. Public relations has been criticised over the years as a deceptive practice, attempting to influence perceptions, to persuade in the interests of powerful clients or organisation or to defend those same interests.

Public relations shares in what has been described as the social construction of reality. The term was introduced by Peter Bergman and Thomas Luckman in their 1966 book with the same title in which they proposed that society collectively constructs and maintains shared meanings, beliefs, and norms through everyday interactions.

Reality is not a given or objective. It is actively produced and reproduced through social processes. Individuals learn these socially constructed realities through socialisation, language, and their interaction with others.

Certain groups are especially influential in shaping perceptions of reality – teachers, the media, and politicians as examples. Critics of public relations argue that public relations is a questionable influence on the presentations of reality.

Good practice

The practice can and should make the case that it is a force for social or collective wellbeing, and practitioners can – if they feel comfortable with this – argue that ultimately this is a benefit of good public relations practice.

The need for this is pressing. Measures of social wellbeing in a country like the UK suggest that collective wellbeing – what the Carnegie Trust measure as Gross Domestic Wellbeing – is in decline. 

Public services are limited in the resources they can draw on, health and other services are working with large backlogs of work to be completed and social cohesion is under significant strain. 

The Office for National Statistics tracks increases in polarisation in the UK, the setting of groups against groups, as well as declines in personal experience of wellbeing. 

Social divisions are currently being stoked as an approach to winning political support – not only in the UK but also in the United States, two countries already home to some of the greatest inequalities in the world in terms of differences between wealthy minorities and many of their populations.

Internationally, where initiatives taken by bodies like the WHO are obscured by developing conflict and diminishing cooperation between countries, the need to reemphasise the obstacles to wellbeing and quality of life is obvious.

Public relations is a developing practice. Its scope extends as it is practised and studied. It has the techniques to do harm if misused, but used in line with the professional standards that are aspired to it has the potential to make a large contribution to social or collective wellbeing. The open door is waiting to be pushed.

Mental Health Awareness Week takes place from 13-19 May in the UK. May is also Mental Health Awareness Month in the US. 

Jon White is an independent consultant who specialises in management and organisation development, public relations, communications management and public affairs. Accredited by the CIPR, he is also a visiting professor at the University of Reading (Henley Business School) and honorary professor of journalism at Cardiff University.