If you’re concerned about talent in the PR industry, I recommend that you check out two recent blog posts by Richard Bailey and Heather Yaxley, both front line PR educators.
Basic training in core skills and practice should be the foundation of the industry. Educators must align their teaching with the day-to-day role of a PR professional, but the industry must also take responsibility for professional development.
As an aside, I innocently asked David Phillips recently why PR academics were under represented on professional PR industry bodies and in the industry media. His response (via his blog) prompted a minor shit storm. It’s well worth a read.
Re-thinking PR degrees
Bailey calls for the PR degree to be reinvented. He reckons that degrees could be delivered in two years.
“In response to higher fees, let’s offer some genuinely full-time degree courses. These could be delivered in two years (in four ten-week terms a year, say).”
He is concerned that students lack the maturity to benefit from this greater level of intensity. I’m not so sure that anyone that has studied a subject with an intensive lecture commitment, such as engineering or science, would agree.
But Bailey is already ahead of us. He suggests that degrees could be delivered as part of a developing PR career.
“[…] let’s deliver a much slower track to those in full-time work, sponsored by their employers to study part-time. Delivery will have to shift from face-to-face to online (or ‘blended’ learning). The learning will move out of the university and into the workplace. The university becomes a partner in rather than an owner of the course.”
At Speed we’ve created a graduate programme to address precisely this challenge and we’ll readily visit universities to talk to undergraduates given the chance. And it’s precisely why we’re considering developing an induction programme in response to increased tuition fees that would see us recruit students direct for sixth form or college.
Role of the PR industry in education
I’m almost certain that Bailey would have a supporter in his call for a rethink of PR education in Yaxley.
On PR Conversation Yaxley calls for the industry to take responsibility for educating its professionals citing Sir Martin Sorrell’s now infamous comment that the industry nicks talent rather than training and developing people in-house.
“There are many ways to learn and develop – but the best take effort and investment […]. Too much training and development in PR seems to involve attending industry conferences where the pinnacle of learning seems to be listening to other practitioners giving anecdotal reports of their own experiences. […] Learning is primarily ‘on the job’, often at the hands of those who do little more than pass on poor practices. I believe these are all areas where the professional bodies need to do more – and not simply with an eye on their revenue generation potential.”
Strong words. I’d love to hear evidence from Yaxley to support these claims. The CIPR and PRCA have long been easy targets. I’d urge critics to take a look at how each organisation is modernising its proposition.
I’m not so naïve as to think any system is perfect but I do believe that the CIPR has taken huge strides in taking its Continuous Professional Development (CPD) scheme online.
Participants are required to earn a quota points per year by participating in training activities or by submitting work for assessment. It’s exactly what you’d expect from more grown-up professions such as finance or medicine.
The industry needs to support practitioner development but individuals must also take personal responsibility. Steve Earl tacked the differences between generation X and generation Y when it comes to personal motivation and professional development in a series of blog posts earlier in the year. There’s also an interesting debate along these lines emerging in the comments on Yaxley’s post.
Modernisation demands digital boot camp
Media fragmentation has prompted us to think hard about professional development at Speed. We have always tied professional development to reviews but the modernisation of the industry has forced us to work hard to ensure that everyone is able to plan and deliver programmes in online, social and traditional media.
It’s the reason we closed the agency for a day recently and ran the Digital Apprentice programme. Failure to understand and be able to work in a fragmented media environment will see practitioners without a job within a generation.
Successful people, in any field, are those that work hard and make a point of surrounding themselves with other successful people. I’m with Malcolm Gladwell when he says that you need 10,000 hours experience to become exceptional in any area of expertise.
There are no short cuts. Not even in the PR industry.
The chasm between basic training and expert knowledge in a field requires continuous professional development, training and mentoring. Practitioners and their employers, whether agency or in-house, have a crucial role to play in developing the next generation of PR experts.
Some great points here Wadds – the one area I’d add is that PR practitioners need to think bigger and understand the wider marketing mix. How are PR people going to be valued at a senior management level – or even become senior management if they don’t understand the wider marketing context?
Doing a qualification such as the CIM Diploma provides the framework for this, obviously to be backed up by on-the-job training – and, in larger, integrated agency groups, why not job shadowing or placements with parts of the group where PR people can extend their knowledge and vice versa.
Thanks for stopping by Chris. Spot on.
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Stephen,
Interesting post (thanks for the link) and much to ponder and offer comments about. My quote about ways to learn and develop was not specifically criticism of the professional bodies – although I’d like to see both PRCA and CIPR include some form of outcome from their training courses so there is genuine learning not simply attendance. This could be in the form of even a post-session online “test” which confirmed learning and turned attending a course into genuine PDP points (see below for my thoughts on that!).
And, I don’t yet feel that either of these bodies is giving students or practitioners robust case studies in their Award programmes as genuine examples of best practice.
In terms of evidence to support my claims – shake any issue of PR Week and look at its conferences for examples of the “talking head” approach to professional development. I’m not saying it isn’t useful to hear from others, but let’s not pretend these sessions aren’t primarily based on anecdotal personal experience (turned into narrative).
Likewise, let’s look at the number of practitioners who attend any form of training or development courses, or who sign up for the professional qualifications offered by CIPR or PRCA or a post-graduate University qualification. It is a minority – often of the minority who bother to join a professional body.
And as much as I support professional development, I disagree about taking the CIPR’s scheme online. I find this not only complicated to complete (unless you are simply including a CIPR course or book), but lacking in a lot of logic. The points system seems very arbitrary – 5 points for reading a blog post for example, but nothing for originating a blog post which, as you appreciate, often takes more research and reflection than simply reading what someone else has written. I was also advised I will be awarded just 30 points for my PhD studies this year – as that counts only as a part-time non-CIPR qualification (so presumably would an A level in media studies). As I’ve written above, points are awarded for attendance on courses (even if you do have to state what you’ve learned) where it would be better if there was an outcome (beyond the basic 50 word reflection).
Nevertheless, the real issue is how few CIPR members (remember the minority of practitioners) are enrolled in the PDP programme. Surely it should be compulsory if the professional bodies are serious about development to sign up for this?
Anyway, good to hear of the work you are doing – and I’ll carry on the conversation re University qualifications etc with Richard.
Now that the tan is fading and the New Year resolutions are
making me irritable, perhaps I can, in my professional capacity as
a contrarian, look at the other end of PR academia. Research. It is
no big secret that the PR models of the 20th century are creaking.
The Grunig models have now been stretched to near breaking point.
Organisations now operate in communications ‘complex adaptive
systems’ (http://goo.gl/iSQx). In relationship and communication
disciplines these systems are very complex (which Bruno Amaral and
I showed at Bled in 2009 http://www.bledcom.com/home/knowledge).
Many of these approaches are already commercially used in other
disciples notably chaos for weather forecasting and semantics in
behavioural mapping for inventory predictions by supermarkets. Such
ideas are being used in many other sectors with great returns on
investemt. These applications are not even leading edge any more
and yet yet there is no Public Relations research in such areas
being offered to practitioners via the CIPR to members or even
through the paper pages of PRW. I just hope that as part of
University courses and CIPR programmes course leaders are offering
students some insights into these prospective opportunities. That,
at least would be a start. Next, we need to explore how
universities media and management faculties can be encouraged to do
for PR what physics did for delivering warmth to all you stay at
homes when it snowed last month (those of us who happened to be in
the tropics are grateful to them for the cold beer). There is
another side to the work of universities beyond churning out two PR
grads for every paid print journalist. On the one hand without more
fundamental, forward looking research this industry is will not be
sustainable. On the other, those practitioners who can master the
semantic chaos of relationships formed using platforms like PC’s,
tablets, games machines, smart phones and car navigation systems
will offer clients the organisational structures that can survive
the internet of things (embeded in your edition of PRW?).