Women & Leadership Australia eNewsletter

October 2009

Organisational external image: Snapshot survey

In the September 2009 eNewsletter we invited members to share their thoughts on how well their organisation's external image matches its internal one.

We were both surprised and pleased to note that around half of respondents felt that their organisation is presenting itself accurately.

One in ten respondents, however, feel that the external image is inflated.

Almost 30%, however, described the opposite, noting that the internal image could be marketed better.

Reflecting the complexities of the relationship between internal and external image, one person commented:

"The external image promotes a philosophy that should be simple to promote internally. Although it is applied to some aspects, there needs to be a re-think of what it really means."

Notably, the vast majority (87%) of respondents told us that their organisation's accurate self-promotion is very important. As one respondent wrote:

"I consider it to be important that the organisation promotes its values accurately. More importantly, the organisation needs to ensure that they act within those values."

Our analyses did not pick up any age differences, but we did note that public sector employees have different reflections from their private sector counterparts.

Only 40% of public sector respondents felt that their organisation's external image matches its internal one (compared to 59% in the private sector).

Public sector respondents were more likely to report that the internal image could be marketed better.

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