Royal Dutch Shell
Introduction
Shell is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office at the Shell Centre in London. It is the largest energy company and the second-largest company in the world measured in terms revenues. It is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry which include exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading. Along with the conventional energy, Shell has significant presence in the renewable energy sector with investments in bio fuels, solar energy and wind energy to mention a few.
It has operations in over 90 countries and employees more than 93,000 people globally. It believes that people are central to its strategy and are involved in the planning and directing of their own work. It also values differences and create channels to report their concerns.

Shell and its people
Shell believes in valuing differences of its employees and believes in providing everyone equal opportunity to develop their skills and talents. Diversity and inclusion has been integrated into the Shell culture through their core values of honesty, integrity and respect for people. This is also reflected in the Shell General Business Principle, which states their aim of creating an inclusive work environment with equal opportunities. Shell has come up with People Standards which helps it to effectively resource, develop and engage staff. These standards work to value different views and opinions, to respect each employee’s personal needs and to promote a safe workplace. Shell aims to continually strive to include diversity and inclusion into principles and practice. The employees are an integral part of the human resources functional plan which has proved to work and the best practice continued success.

Shell and the communication
Shell is a huge company with more than 93,000 employees in more than 90 countries. It is of huge importance, how shell communicates with its diverse team of people? Shell values communication and consultation with the employees, directly or via councils or trade unions. Employees are encouraged to report their views about the processes and practices to manager. The global telephone helpline and website, set up by Shell enables employees to exchange their view.

Shell and communication
Shell already has a very reliable and systematic communication model based on the reports and paper on the company. It has a very dependable internal communication model with various means of communication such as their global telephone helpline and website available to all its employees. It is a portal to share and comment on any personal issues, such as discrimination and workplace safety. It has a very good model for communication and has understood the needs and wants of its employees.
Communication is an integral and important part in the company. It has set out various clearly defined policies and rules about communicating within and outside the company in its code of conduct. The company has outlined the basic regulations on the way the communication should be, especially on external communicating. This code enables the employees express their view in a safe and confidential manner and also helps in horizontal communication within the company.
Being a global company with operations in more than 90 countries around the world and more than 93,000 employees coming from very diverse backgrounds and cultures, it is has amazing communication strategies making it a success story. The company with it diversity in culture has shown remarkable capabilities to tackle the cultural differences amongst its employees and the environment where they have operations in. Shell has various operations around the world and has been able to build an image and reputation of its brand via various public relations measures. It has various mean and modes of communicating its brand, mission, goals and products from advertisements and commercial product information through its website and social media. This has enabled Shell to be one of the world’s most recognisable energy brands.
Apart from the conventional public relations means Shell has various other ways of promoting the brand and image like the sponsorships, (sponsors the Ferrari racing team) which is most recognised in Formula One World motor racing championship. It is the company that supplies the required fuel to the Formula One World Championship.
Shell has various alternative energy operations being one of the world biggest producers of solar panels and bio fuels. It has several advertising and public relation policies to promote its “green energy”, non-the-less it has come under various controversies. “Some Shell's advertising regarding its renewable energy business has been described as a “green wash” by some environmental lobbies, though its renewable energy activities have been praised by other commentators”

Shell and my view of its internal communication
Even though Shell has good communication strategies it still requires more advanced and horizontal communication. It can be understood from the case study and literatures available on Shell, that the company focuses more on solving its employees’ relationships and the take issues against discriminations and work place safety, instead of focusing on the diversity and employee company relationship. It is has to have a more broad based communication structure where the employees can not only discuss about the problems faced by them but also have a say on the processes of the operations they work at.
Having more than 93,000 employees from the world over it is remarkable of how it has been able to maintain a very good balance between the diverse cultures and work ethics and principles. The code of conduct of the company has made it very easy to maintain a good but a single channel of communication, where it can be seen as a more vertically oriented communication structure.
The communication within an organisation should be a good balance of both the horizontal and vertical communication structures. Shell can implement horizontal communication in a broader way and reach out to its employees more directly, which the company does through trade unions. However trade unions not necessarily address the views and needs of all its employees and there are problems in place where trade unions are illegal, this is a barrier to horizontal communication. Therefore the company has to focus more on the direct interaction between the managerial levels and the lower level employees. This can help the company work more efficiently and avoid any unnecessary problems in communication.
It is important to consider the cultural diversity within the organisation as well. It is very difficult to work under situations where the employees are not used to the same cultures and work ethics around the work. The company has so far shown excellent capabilities and strengths in working with such a diverse group of people and making the best out of it. The company truly understands the need to focus on diversity.

Shell and my view on its external communication
Shell is one of the world largest energy companies with operations in more than 90 countries around the world. It has various public relation practices and promotion processes. It has become a global brand by being able to reach out to the people it provides its services. It logo known as the "pecten" after the sea shell Pecten maximus (the giant scallop), on which its design is based, the current version of the brand was designed by Raymond Loewy and introduced in 1971. The yellow and red colours used are thought to relate to the colours of the flag of Spain as Shell built early service stations in the state of California which had strong connections with Spain. This shows the relatedness of the brand with the people and has been a hugely successful logo which is easily recognisable.
Shell is a brand build by communicating in the best possible way, its external communication is very successful but not without controversies. Shell may need to do more promotion and communicate using different styles of communicating according to the cultures in which it aims to operate in.
It is very important for any company to provide the right information to all its consumers and to the related agencies, Shell has faced controversies in this as well and in August 2008, the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that Shell had misled the public in an advertisement when it claimed that a $10 billion oil sands project in Alberta, Canada was a "sustainable energy source"

Conclusion
Any business needs good internal and external communications to have a good working condition and to promote its brand and reputation. Shell so far has set very high standards for itself and its competitors. The most interesting and successful way of providing internal communication at Shell is the “Shell Code of Conduct”, which highlights all the necessary information to its employees. This is by far the best means to communicate. However, Shell should focus more on horizontal communication rather than vertical communication

References 1. http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/download-shell-edition-10-full-case-study_76_201_526 2. http://www.shelldialogues.com/ 3. http://www.shell.com 4. http://www.shell.com/home/content/aboutshell/who_we_are/our_values/code_of_conduct/ 5. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww static.shell.com%2Fstatic%2Faboutshell%2Fdownloads%2Fwho_we_are%2Fcode_of_conduct%2Fcode_of_conduct_english_2010.pdf 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell