There is an urgent need to talk about well-being in Higher Education Institutions: What is the role of public relations and organizational communication?

Abstract

Organizational communication has undergone operational changes over time. Unidirectional and sequential models are obsolete and have increasingly been replaced by more symmetrical and bidirectional models. In this sense, it is important to consider all the audiences involved in communication, understanding that message recipients are increasingly active players, and that their feedback is fundamental. On the other hand, the issue of well-being has been on the agenda of many organizations, as the well-being of organizational actors may be related to their motivation, commitment and performance. Despite this, these two topics have been treated individually, disregarding their possible relationship, and there has also been little investment in the context of higher education. In this research study, we sought to understand the extent to which the two themes intersect, fitting them into the context of higher education.  We therefore wanted to understand how the communication offices of higher education institutions (HEIs) have acted in relation to the communication of student assistance. To this end, we carried out a qualitative study, operationalized by conducting 8 semi-structured interviews with 8 heads of communication offices from 8 different higher education institutions. We only took public institutions into consideration, as they were the majority of our sample. To complement this data collection, we also analyzed the websites of the 15 Portuguese Public Polytechnic Institutes. Through the analysis of the interviews, we can generally conclude that, although the role of communication offices is central in this field, communication about social action is still very scarce. The analysis of the interviews shows that it is still difficult to establish a “manual of good practices” in terms of communication, and it is also difficult to establish which channel is the most appropriate, depending on the type of audience. The heads of the communication offices also mention a difficulty in personalizing communication and making it more inclusive. By analyzing the websites, we found that although some institutions already have initiatives on the subject, there is still a need for major investment in this area, and there is also a need for a close relationship between the communications offices and the psychology and student support offices. Of the 15 Polytechnic Institutes analyzed, there were still 2 where there was no promotion or initiative on well-being during the first semester of 2024. We can therefore conclude that there is still a way to go in the communication that takes place between Higher Education Institutions - public relations and organizational communication play a fundamental role here, especially in terms of inclusion, welcome and even academic success.