PR doesn’t have it easy at the moment. Gone are the days of frivolous boozing and twisting your journalist mate’s arm to run a spurious story for you. Well, mostly.
Today what we do is modernising fast because the media is changing. How we do things and why they matter is increasingly being sharpened up.
There’s enough going on with all that. But put all of those things to one side and it’s the R word that is dominating PR at the moment.
Recession is the overriding factor dominating how PR businesses are run, how they’re developed, what their aspirations are and how PR is bought at the moment.
There may be plenty of agencies that might say they’ve never been busier, but that’s typically because of conservative resourcing levels and short-term PR spending. And many may just be feasting on their own bravado. And anyway, nobody likes a show-off.
Others, most others, struggle to see far into the future. That doesn’t mean they’re in trouble, it just means that financial forecasting is difficult to call.
Most people running PR agencies have acknowledged that, like most sectors, the recession has brought unprecedented challenges. What few seem to have aired publicly, though, is the impact these tough times are having on their staff.
In the past few weeks I’ve talked to numerous recruiters, peers and clients about how agencies are treating their staff at the moment. I’m not getting at whether they’re being nice to them or nasty to them, though that would make a dirty little ditty no doubt.
What I’m getting at is whether agency management teams are responding wisely, transparently and fairly to helping their personnel through a recession.
According to the EMEA vice president of HR at technology giant Oracle, it’s time to stop talking about the recession and cutbacks, and be more positive about the future.
That’s certainly what many PR agencies and sector watchers seem to have adopted as their modus operandi over the past six months and yet the reality of working for many PR agencies at the moment points to a somewhat different tale.
Many of the job applicants Speed has seen through its doors in recent months talk about how many agency staffers are being asked to do jobs a level above their pay grade.
You always have to do this to an extent, but it’s an easy way for agencies to keep costs lower while retaining clients. It only works short-term though.
Others talk of their career development having stalled. Well, face facts people: a less buoyant market (and then some) means fewer opportunities and, probably, less rapid progression. Economic slowdown may well mean career slowdown. C’est la vie.
Here are a few helpful tips (not that I’m in a position to be the expert on this really, but I’ve started so I’ll finish) to senior management of PR agencies about how to manage their personnel in a recession:
- Honesty: be transparent about your financial position, your business plan and your targets. Don’t scare people, but be frank. Many may scoff and this and tell me to get real, but if you’ve hired smart people they will know the gist of it anyway
- Understanding: many, if not most, of the people working for PR agencies today will not have worked through a recession before. Sure there was the dot.com blip, but after a bruising the technology and digital people dusted themselves down. This recession is a different beast. People need to come to terms with it, and need guiding through that reality gently
- Appreciation: people will be working harder. Work is tough to come by, there’s increased competition and a long queue of people wanting jobs. If you have loyal, hardworking, keen and intelligent people sweating it out every day, tell them why you’re enraptured with that kind of behaviour
- Development: it may be more difficult to prove yourself because there’s less to get your teeth into. But opportunities have changed, not disappeared. Agencies still need to adopt a consistent and relentless approach to developing talent and seek to push people to improve themselves. Our business is changing so fast that no-one should have any excuse not to be learning lots of new and valuable things. If they hide behind excuses, it’s probably time for them to look for another type of job
- Discomfort: given the above, it’s time to challenge people to learn new skills and push themselves, albeit against the backdrop of a painful recession. But what people learn and experience at times like this will be invaluable for the rest of their careers. We need to take people out of their comfort zones a little: give them things to do they’ve never done before, give them bigger and bolder responsibilities, get them to be braver in what they achieve for clients and for the agency.
“Many of the job applicants Speed has seen through its doors in recent months talk about how many agency staffers are being asked to do jobs a level above their pay grade.”
I wonder if the senior management of these firms are also taking a pay cut as well? Leading by example and all that.
To quote David Maister*: “Let’s succeed by working more hours with ever-decreasing amounts of support” is not the most sophisticated piece of business thinking I have ever heard. As he also says. “If you want people to live up to their commitments and obligations, then you must live up to yours first. People will never live up to higher standards than their manager exhibits.
*May I suggest you read David Maister’s Strategy and the Fat Smoker? Especially the bit about “Warlord” professional service firms – I’d argue many PR agencies fall into this category….
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by mynameisearl and Ben Caspersz, James Farquharson. James Farquharson said: RT @mynameisearl: Blogged – Don't believe the hype: tackling PR's recession http://bit.ly/dJHNbU. [...]
Maister is also good on the subject of skills development – as he says, skills are an asset – and like any asset, unless you maintain or improve it, the value of that asset will inevitably decline over time. The challenge now is that the depreciation of the value of your skills is more rapid than it has ever been in the past. Think of skills as a pension contribution – if an employer makes an investment in training and development, then the employee should be obliged to match that commitment with self development. That’s just a fact of how the world is, and will continue to be – unless an asteroid comes along and wipes us all out.
Thanks Andy you have cheered my day
Dead right on skills development. I find some agencies seem to want to develop people to the pinncale of their profit profile – hard-working senior account manager, probably underpaid, overworked, but holding down lots of client budgets, then let them drift over time into being an account director. And then let them sit there treading water, without much development support, until they’re no longer useful. A familar glass ceiling for many I’ve talked to. Just, er, sayin’.
Always happy to cheer people up
To paraphrase Maister (again, sorry) , professional service firms use the language of relationships ie with their employees, clients, stakeholders, but behave in a transactional manner. Employees are simply a means to an end.
Warming to my theme, here’s more on the Warlord firm:
“In extreme warlord firms, the productive senior members operate as chieftans presiding over their own territories, occasionally collaborating but generally acting without a long-run commitment to the institution or each other. The past and the future are not often items high on the agenda. Consequently, over time, the performance of extreme warlord firms often swings through peaks and valleys. Much management energy is expended in modulating the politically charged environment.
“In addition, many warlord firms have reduced or eliminated entry-level recruiting, purportedly because of the short term cost of hiring and training such people. They prefer to hire laterally from other firms, to avoid the costs of investing in junior people (or as Martin Sorrell has said, PR firms simply “steals talent” from each other http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/opinion/1044373/Danny-Rogers-PR-industry-needs-develop-talent-pool/).
“Such firms are sending two uncongenial messages: The people we hire are fungible and there is nothing special about us. As a result, they fail to develop the loyalty and cohesiveness needed during periods of both prosperity and stress.”
Hits the mark, don’t you think?
Fungible eh?
‘We hire the best people: once someone else has trained them’.
Daft isn’t it?
Another clear example of where the PR industry needs to grow up. The same old crap does us a disservice.
Don’t have a lot to add to this Steve, but just wanted to say what a great piece this is. Fantastic to read someone saying it how it is without the bravado and without the hype. It’s just facing the truth head-on. BOTTLE is doing well and we’re fortunate enough (or not, we choose to work here for a reason) to work for people who respect their staff and treat them superbly. But there are many, many agencies out there that don’t. Nice one, Steve.
[...] a related theme, Speed Communications joint Managing Director Steve Earl had a great post this week talking about how recession is the overriding factor dominating how PR businesses are run, [...]