|
|
 What state is the PR profession in? This week I read through a report that the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has just published on exactly that – “The Annual State of the PR Profession”. I think it was a mixed bag of results and it was good to have insight into board level representation for the first time.
How did it work?
ComRes surveyed almost 2000 CIPR members in 2009 and the key finding was that “while the professions has remained resilient, economic pressures continue to bite with almost half of in-house public sector respondents worried about redundancy”.
Those results will come as no surprise to anyone in comms/PR and particularly in the public sector. However what I think is interesting is the report revealed that 22% of practitioners surveyed hold a board position and 35% who aren’t on the board say there is a communications professional on the board. Hurrah! I think this is really encouraging and would hope that these figures continue to rise as more organisations see the value in communication and give it a seat at the big table.
Compared to last year’s findings, there were similar results for the gender split in communications/PR, with 65% female practitioners compared to 35% male. The report showed that men are more likely to hold a senior management or Director position than female practitioners however overall there were more women in the sample than men (the ratio was almost 2:1). The CIPR say that once they surveyed the higher levels of responsibility, eg Director and Senior Management, that difference has largely disappeared, with the proportions of men at Director level double that of women at Director level (18% of men in sample compared to 9% of women). As there are more women in the sample overall the absolute numbers are similar.
Expected areas of growth were identified as:
• online reputation management
• crisis management
• internal communications.
These areas are understandable due to the need for organisations to communicate and engage in difficult times. Comms practitioners who completed the survey said that event management and sponsorship were under ‘downward pressure’. With all of the cuts across the board for comms professionals those results were to be expected and I wonder whether they will creep up again in the future.
What is it worth?
Pay is always a tricky subject, with people seemingly performing similar roles in different organisations varying wildly. I know this was a hot topic of conversation among my peers at Kingston Uni’s post-grad in Internal Comms Management course last year. The CIPR survey showed that 34%, 39% and 35% of private sector, consultancy and freelance practitioners earn a salary in excess of £50k. This contrasts with 19% in the public sector and 20% in not for profit or NGO.
I welcome research like this, it’s useful to have insight into what professionals say is important to them and how they are being treated, recognised (and paid!). Want to read more? You can see the full results and research on the CIPR Research and Reports page.
Post author: Rachel
Tonight I went to Hill & Knowlton’s offices in Soho Square for the latest in a line of free events from the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA). This was the first time I’d been in touch with the PRCA and I know they have in-house teams as part of their membership. I hoped they wouldn’t mind a Comms professional ‘gatecrashing’ what was essentially an event for PR professionals, but I needn’t have worried as the welcome was more than warm and the drinks were perfectly chilled.
PRCA hold Campaign Master-classes on the second Tuesday of each month at different locations. They are billed as ‘showcasing some of the industries’ best campaigns and are designed to enhance creative thinking and developing strategic thought’. Sounded good to me, so thought I would get in touch and find out more.
The two campaigns under the spotlight were Wash & Go (Hill & Knowlton) and working with a high profile Meerkat (Frank PR).
H&K showcased how they celebrated the 21st birthday of Wash & Go with a comical spoof of the 1980’s TV ad ‘take two bottles into the shower’. You can see the original ad on YouTube here. They wanted to reconnect the brand with its ‘male prime prospect’. The spoof featured footballer Jimmy Bullard and you can view it on YouTube here. It was fascinating to hear the thoughts behind the campaign and how the video achieved 250,000+ hits after just three days. The H&K team spoke about their five key learnings and I found it interesting to hear their views.
Alex Grier from Frank PR spoke about Russian billionaire, business-kat and celebrity Meerkat Aleksandr Orlov and his quest to educate the public on the difference between comparethemeerkat.com and comparethemarket.com. Alex highlighted the various methods that have been used to help keep the profile high including getting the phrase ‘simples’ into the Oxford English Dictionary, topping the Christmas top toy charts and launching a Meerchat show, interviewing Piers Morgan and The Hoff.
I enjoyed hearing about the variety of methods used and the stories behind both campaigns, it was a really interesting few hours and I’m planning to keep an eye on the PRCA’s schedule of events. I enjoyed networking, meeting some new people and admiring the awesome view from H&K’s offices!
Have you been to any good Comms or PR events recently? If you want to share what you learnt and write a guest post for my blog, do get in touch. Rachel.
I’ve just returned from the Communication Directors’ Forum on board Arcadia and had an extremely productive few days. I met lots of interesting communications and PR professionals from a whole range of industries from charity to transport, retail to healthcare. What struck me were the commonalities between us all regardless of our sectors and types of businesses.
The forum was really well organised by Richmond Events and was a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with my peers and suppliers. There are some exciting offerings around at the moment and I thought some of the work being showcased by the agencies was innovative and creative. It’s always good to know what works for other organisations and the suppliers on board including beetroot , 3 monkeys and The Phoenix Partners had some interesting stories to tell and tips to share.
As with any gathering of comms professionals, conversation always turns to current challenges, ways of overcoming difficulties and shared stories of success and failure. I found it interesting to note that despite all the piles of leaflets and emails offering social media seminars that are flying around, this did not feature as one of the hot topics of conversation and in fact was barely mentioned by the group.
So I thought I would share some thoughts from conversations I had and provide an insight into what really is being discussed by communication professionals and what we are looking for. I can’t claim to speak on behalf of the whole industry, but thought it useful to share my thoughts and findings. They are in no particular order, apart from the first one.
Budget
Surely no surprise that this is number one. Budget (or lack of) was a recurring theme among my peers. Being asked to deliver more for less money, or even no money, kept raising its head and united the delegates. We were sharing tips on how to get value for money, how to make funds go further and work harder. How to prioritise and choose if told that comms channels need to be scaled back or cut was another hot topic of debate.
Commercial awareness
Many people spoke about the need to have people in comms teams with good commercial awareness. I realised that I haven’t seen a course anywhere amongst the plethora of ones which are whizzing around, which provide an overview of ‘what finance do, what HR professionals deal with daily’ or something along those lines. Maybe they do exist but I can’t recall seeing one and am happy to be corrected. Business partner models are increasingly popular for comms teams to operate under, but how well equipped are the people in those teams to have at least a basic understanding of the challenges facing the separate business units? This was being debated over lunch one day on one of the tables I was at, with the conclusion that job shadowing and overview courses would be useful to train up people in comms teams.
Communicating with frontline employees
Interestingly there was a lot of talk about how to get messages to frontline workers, particularly if companies do not have robust structures/technology in place to operate effective cascade systems. Also being debated were the ways of having two-way dialogues with employees, particularly when budget and cultures are not lined up to help this happen easily. This was also highlighted at a couple of the speakers’ sessions I went to and speakers shared their advice.
Career development
I had many conversations with delegates about career development including where people began their careers. I found out through conversation over lunch that the Director of Comms for the NSPCC started his career as a journalist on the same local paper I did and we know lots of people in common – another reminder of how small the comms world actually is! Conversations turned to what people are looking for from their current roles, where they want to work in the future, skills they want to learn and how to motivate comms teams. The common thread between everyone I spoke to was the desire to know from each other what our backgrounds were and what the future looks like both short and long term and what we need to ‘keep up’ with in order to succeed.
Keeping in touch – communicating
Having had conversations with around 50 people over the past few days and collecting piles of business cards from each other, lots of us spent the weekend connecting via LinkedIn, emailing and arranging to meet over the next few weeks. I’m planning to keep in touch to continue conversations started on Arcadia. I have no doubt that the conversations from the forum will continue among groups of people who met over the past few days. Facilitating ways for comms professionals to get together is crucial and can only serve to benefit the companies they represent and their own personal development.
Did you go to the forum? What was your experience? Do let me know your thoughts, Rachel.
The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) held its world conference in Canada this month and as I was unable to go I’ve been reading as much as I can about what went on across the pond.  I think it’s really important to be aware of key trends and new thinking and Twitter has been useful to point me in the right direction to what took place in Toronto.
A couple of sites I’ve come across have highlighted the seven crucial communication roles that were discussed at the conference. You can read their original posts here and here. Steve Crescenzo, principal of Crescenzo Communications in the US, cautioned that if communicators don’t take these changes into account, they “run the risk of becoming irrelevant in their organisations”.
A discussion took place looking at the seven ways communicators need to change in order to be relevant five years from now. I’ve paraphrased the info I’ve read below in order to share with my network as it certainly provided me with food for thought. It reminded me of a popular brand of face cream with its seven signs of ageing! Seems like this is a recipe for relevancy rather than wrinkles, but an interesting mix nonetheless.
Information from the IABC discussion on the seven ways communicators need to change in order to be relevant five years from now are below. What do you think? Do you agree with them?
The talent
This is the time for corporate communication to shine. Social media, new media and multimedia are all in need of creative people who can talk and write in a conversational fashion. “We can use our talents to cut through the clutter”, says Crescenzo. The challenge is to step up to the ages old argument that things need to be done the same way they have always been done, and explain to managers that the old way has not worked.
The talent scout
Communication managers need to find people in the organisation who have something to say – either internally or externally. Then, they need to tap into the stories that those people have and find the platform for telling those stories. The big mind shift is for communicators to realise that these people do not, and should not, necessarily be the leaders of the organisation. It needs to be the people. “And yet companies still insist on using traditional communication, like posters, email and intranet”, says Crescenzo. While those have their place, it’s how you strategically manage the content that will determine whether internal communication has any degree of impact.
The big picture painter
“With all the information flying around, someone needs to tell the story of the business. The best way to do it is to use people to tell the story of what the business is doing. Great communicators do not write about policies and programmes, they think about people”, explained Crescenzo.
The community organiser
Conversations are happening whether corporates choose to recognise this or not, and it’s mostly happening in the social media space. Most executives are fearful of corporate communications, without realising that ignoring it simply means they do not know what is being said anyway.
Crescenzo says communicators need to embrace social media tools and work with managers to educate them on the benefits and challenges it poses. When done safely, it can lead to greater awareness and control of overall conversations.
The multimedia story teller
Corporate communications needs to embrace the use of social media and integrate various multimedia elements where employees can contribute content to central repositories and share their stories. “The age of the flip camera is upon is. The technology has never been cheaper to use, and people in fact expected a multimedia web”, says Crescenzo. When presented with the opportunity, “staff respond by creating these really cool videos… it’s happening everywhere, even in the most serious of companies”, he adds.
The social media coach
Organisations’ leaders need a lot of help with social media and new media technologies. Communicators need to figure out what’s right for them and how it would work for them. “We need to find executives in our organisations who would be good at blogging, podcasting and other things… we have to help them. They are stiff and bogged down by corporate jargon… show them how to change that – it can be done”, says Crescenzo.
The creative strategist
Communicators cannot be creative for creativity’s sake – everything communication does should be done to tie back to the objectives of the organisation. Business goals and communication goals need to be aligned, long before message development, and certainly before content is created. “Most communicators fail because they jump straight into creativity and content generation without understand WHY they are communicating”, says Crescenzo.
These are all practical tools that simply require communication practitioners to think differently about what they are doing today. As the paradigms of communication change, so do the methodologies and tools being used by communicators. Crescenzo concludes: “Times are changing, why aren’t we. We cannot be a whiteboard culture anymore. We need to change the internal culture of organisations to better meet consumers’ needs”.
Want to find out more? There are podcasts, vodcasts and more information being uploaded at www.talk2us.co.za.
 Last week the British Association of Communicators in Business (CiB) formally became the Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC). The organisation says it aims to champion better communication between employers and employees and wants to “improve business success and profitability through enhanced communication within organisations.”
I think it’s a smart move to have a dedicated association, particularly with the words ‘internal communication’ in its name and welcome the change. I’ve been reading the comments on the IoIC LinkedIn group and there seems to be a desire from members to make the move more than merely a name change, with calls for “new dynamism and new focus.”
The new website, Twitter ID and LinkedIn group are underway and I think there are exciting times ahead. What’s your feeling about the change?
I’ll let IoIC chairman Dominic Walters have the last word in this post, with quotes from their press release: “Increased awareness by many organisations of the pivotal role of internal communication is one of the reasons why the time is right for the launch of the new Institute. However, we must also remember that many organisations still do not fully understand internal communication or how to go about achieving employee engagement – that is staff who are content in their work, understand their organisation’s goals and are committed to making their contribution towards achieving them.
“We aim to ‘spread the word’ to all types of organisations – public and private sector, large and small – as internal communication is important to everyone. One of the key factors for us in improving standards across the board is ensuring that communication professionals are up to the job, understand business objectives and inspire confidence in senior management – hence the IoIC’s focus on professional development and thought leadership.
“With the increased complexity of internal communication practice, and the range of tools at practitioners’ disposal, it is now very important that communication professionals have their own institute to provide dedicated support.’’
Last Thursday communications guru (and one of my personal heroes), Bill Quirke led a teaching session at Kingston PgDip in Internal Communications Management. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay and hear him speak, however current student Siobhán Roddis from Ernst & Young has kindly written this guest post on her thoughts from his session, Rachel.
I really enjoyed Bill’s session, which focused on ‘How to raise your game as an internal communicator’. I’ve never heard him speak previously, although others in the room had. I was expecting lots of war stories and case studies to help bring the theory to life, and he didn’t disappoint.
For me, the most interesting points which emerged during the discussion were around building credibility with senior leaders and ‘speaking their language’. This isn’t about spouting corporate jargon; it’s about challenging ourselves to better understand business challenges – what’s keeping your leader awake at night, and working with them to solve challenge through better communication.
I really identified with this point. I work for Ernst & Young, where our business is selling the skills and expertise of our people. In the same way I would expect a tax consultant, for example, to work hard to understand a client’s business challenges and then work with them to identify how we could help; I believe that internal communicators have a responsibility to do this with their stakeholders if they want to add real value to an organisation. It’s our job to make the link for leaders between good communication, engagement and business success, but we must do it in their language.
A CEO losing sleep over falling revenues is hardly likely to respond warmly to an invitation to discuss next week’s company newsletter. But talk to them about a plan to boost sales activity through better engaged staff, and suddenly they’re interested.
As communicators, we must continuously challenge ourselves to better understand the trends and pressures of the organisations we operate in if we are to be seen by leaders as credible and valuable assets.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts Siobhán and good luck with your final assignment, Rachel.
Post author: Siobhán Roddis
 Next week Communicators in Business (CiB) will formally become the Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC). As professional communicators look to the future, I was in touch with Sarah, my mentee, today and recommended she reads a book I came across last year while studying. It’s called Effective Internal Communication (PR in practice) by Lyn Smith and Pamela Mounter and was published by CIPR/Kogan Page in 2005, although my edition was published in 2008. I specifically recommended that she reads the final chapter.
Its title is Internal communications – the future. These eight pages start with Good morning Mr, Mrs, Ms Internal Communicator, this is your early morning wake up call from the big screen in your living room. It is 1 January 2035…everyone can use an avatar or a virtual replacement and so it continues. What struck me when I first read this chapter last year was that it provided a vision of the future which still seemed a long way off. However reading it again now I can see how far technology has come in a relatively short amount of time and I like the aspirations expressed in the chapter, so thought I would share them here.
Future skills
According to the book, the knowledge and skills internal comms professionals of the future need:
- The ability to speak and write coherently and attractively
- Understanding of the mechanics of the function (to deliver top-level advice)
- Political understanding, cited as the most important skill for the professional communicator
- A deep understanding of how top managers’ minds work and how this may impact the way the organisation functions
- Understanding of business information eg financial matters and organisation’s field of operation.
Never mind in 25 years time, to me those ingredients appear essential today. However the key attribute according to Smith and Mounter for the comms professional of the future is ‘an extreme level of adaptability – a willingness to get to grips with the advances that will continue to underpin communication technologies’.
Linking in and switching on
I’ve been watching a discussion on LinkedIn that was started a month ago by Melcrum’s Head of Content James Bennett. He asked how many comms professionals in Melcrum’s Communicators Network and the internal comms community have an iPhone. There are nearly 50 comments on the discussion and the consensus appears to be that we can’t quite imagine life before owning an iPhone or equivalent. Having apps at our fingertips, good enough quality cameras to produce print-worthy photos and videos are enabling internal communicators to be even more adaptable than ever.
The chapter ends with looking at how internal communicators will be regarded in the future: “Education, and continuing education at that, will be critical in ensuring the internal communicator achieves top-level status. An increasingly competitive global market will ensure that effective communication, whether with internal and/or external audiences, is seen as vital to economic survival. Get it right and the future is yours”.
What do you think? Where will internal communications be in 25 years time? What are the skills the communicator of the future needs to have? Would love to know your thoughts.
Thank you again to everyone who submitted their top tips to be included in my presentation for internal comms professionals. I had the pleasure of meeting the current group of students working towards the post-grad diploma in Internal Communications Management at Kingston Uni/Capita Learning & Development today. Alongside Geoff Timblick @GeoffTinUK from Vodafone (and ex-classmate of mine from last year’s course) we led a teaching session and shared our thoughts, including your top tips. We were talking about social media, why it’s important for comms professionals to keep up-to-date and passing on ideas for surviving the fourth and final assignment of the course.
As promised and following requests to share the comments, here are the tips sent to me via this blog, LinkedIn and Twitter. They reflect the views of the people who sent them to me. I’m grateful for the swift responses to my request, so thank you again. You helped me demonstrate the importance of comms professionals connecting with each other and the value of sharing ideas, best practice and ultimately – communicating.
Here they are:
“Relevance and resonance key. Use comms that fix business challenges in ways that work for the audience rather than what’s ‘cool’”
“Being an enabler instead of a creator | measure anything which you can and use it | networking | tell colleagues what IC is about”
“Think about the people and culture first before introducing new tools”
“Your best internal social media tools are a phone, an excel spreadsheet and the willingness to talk and connect”
“SM tip would be evolution not revolution. Evolve your existing IC strategy to incorporate SM. Don’t create a separate strategy”
“Be a chameleon – if you’re going to be voice of both staff and the organisation you need to meet people on both levels. Professional, credible, astute trusted advisor to your clients, and “one of us” to employees (and everything in between). Book smart is one thing but never underestimate the importance of emotional intelligence”
“When I was an internal communications specialist with a billion-dollar corporation, the number one thing I learned was to always share the news with your employees BEFORE you release it to the public, the media or your customers. I saw this mistake happen over and over again, and there’s nothing worse for employee morale than to read breaking news about your company somewhere else first”
“My top tips are ready widely, network lots with other in-house IC practitioners and never ever pay for IC consultancy”
“Don’t confuse with internal comms with journalism – they’re very different animals. Think about internal comms as building business-focused relationships, not being a publisher of news. There may be an element of the latter involved, but effective internal communication is getting other people talking rather than always holding the loudhailer”
“Top IC social media tip? Have faith in your people to find ways to facilitate their communication; they will do the hard work for you!”
 I’m currently preparing my thoughts as I’ve been asked to speak with the students studying for Kingston Uni’s year long post-graduate diploma in Internal Communications Management.
Regular readers will know this is the course I graduated from in January, and I’m looking forward to returning to the classroom to meet the current group of Internal Communications (IC) professionals. I’m speaking on conducting research and the importance of IC professionals using/understanding social media. As part of my presentation I’d like to close by sharing the thoughts of my blog readers and Twitter users.
So it’s over to you… I’m looking for your number one piece of advice please. What has really helped you in your career? What book or website could you simply not do without? What is your top tip students should know? I’d love to hear from you and know the class will too.
Please send me a tweet (@rachallen), comment here or ping me an email (rach@rachallen.com). Thank you.
According to the news, political history was made tonight due to the live TV debate. I found it fascinating, not just hearing what Brown, Cameron and Clegg were saying and studying their body language, tone of voice etc but also for the comments via Twitter.
Reading the constant stream of comments was intriguing and very often amusing. I wonder how many comms professionals were also watching the debate and finding themselves analysing the coverage and thinking about the research the various comms teams must have done to prepare the three of them. I found it odd to watch the no applause rule as it seemed strange to hear people speak in a way which usually provokes a reaction such as clapping and to be met with silence.
A truly interesting night’s viewing and one which I’m sure will be mulled over for many more days to come, with every phrase and gesture analysed. Fascinating. What did you think? Did you watch the coverage? Do you provide opportunities for your Exec team to be in front of employees and answer their questions? Interested to know your thoughts, Rachel.
|
|
