This month in PR (September 2024)
The state of the profession
The CIPR’s State of the Profession 2024 report provides a useful snapshot of where we are, with the cautionary note that we’re drawing conclusions applicable to all from 1,500 completed questionnaires.
33% of respondents said they work in-house in the public sector earning £51,000 on average; 28% in-house in the private sector (£54,000); 19% in-house at not-for-profit organisations (£48,000); and 20% work for consultancies (£60,000) or as independent practitioners (£66,000).
An 80-20 split between in-house and consultancy may surprise many. Young graduates more commonly find their first roles in consultancy or agency teams, and consultants tend to be more visible on social media, for the obvious reason that they have their services to promote.
This suggests that the questionnaire is more likely to be completed by more experienced practitioners, and may also reflect the historic division between the CIPR with its origins in local government and public sector comms and the PRCA with its origins as a trade association for the larger consultancies, though that division is much less apparent today.
Two thirds of respondents (66%) said they had a hybrid working pattern while 18% worked fully onsite and 15% were fully remote.
There was a focus on training and development in this year’s survey with 77% saying they had received some training in the previous year. Training in artificial intelligence (AI) topped the list, but digital PR / social media training was also common. The focus was on training as distinct from professional qualifications (see below for a chance to learn more about CIPR professional qualifications).
In each annual survey, respondents are asked to name the top three challenges they face and the answers show what’s changed over recent years. None of the top challenges from 2017 appear today (eg ‘changing social and digital landscape’ which remained prominent until 2019). Instead, we have the impact of AI, fake news/disinformation, and the expanding skillset required of practitioners.
One aspect of this expanding skillset is artificial intelligence. Yet just 17% say they use it daily, 28% often and 28% sometimes. 19% rarely use it and 8% say they never do. Most (67%) already have workplace policies on AI.
CIPR’s State of the Profession 2024 report is available here.
The reputation of PR was another issue explored in the survey, which leads to two questions: what do we think of ourselves, and what do others think of us?
On the first question, Tony Langham explained in an opinion piece for PRmoment why he and others in corporate advisory work shy away from the term public relations.
‘Our terror at being labelled PR is understandable, because PR is a commodity. When PR professionals appear on screen they’re either malicious or trivial, or both; think Samantha Jones in Sex and the City, or Olivia Pope in Scandal.’
Reflecting on his 2018 book Reputation Management, he has come to see the problem with this name too.
The term “reputation management” now conjures images of digital dark arts or legions of lawyers working for bad people.
So, how does he now explain what he does?
‘As corporate advisers we’re highly paid and want to be more so. To do this we must make a significant difference at key moments in our clients’ world. There’s not a lucrative future in “business as usual” or in situations where the solution is formulaic or obvious. What the best corporate advisers in our industry excel at, is advising on special situations. So over dinner, if you’re still awake after I’ve gone through helping manage reputations and public relations, I’ll tell you I advise businesses, leaders, organisations and countries on special situations.’
Professional lobbying
If reputation management now conjures images of the dark arts, then what about lobbying? The word lobbying is so often followed by scandal that the CIPR has seized the opportunity of a new parliament to run an educational campaign on what MPs should expect from professional lobbyists.
Maggie Nally lecture
You’ve heard the phrase ‘it’s PR, not ER’. Perhaps it’s time to rethink this and to set higher ambitions for our work. This year’s Maggie Nally Memorial Lecture (in memory of the CIPR’s first female president) was given by Cristiana Salvi from the World Health Organization. She presented a new framework for risk communication and infodemic management and strongly argued for the importance of community engagement in health emergencies. Observing the shift from communication being considered an afterthough at the time of the SARS outbreak in 2003 to the evidence presented by Covid-19, she was able to report that risk communication is now acknowledged as a positive health intervention.
Risk communication is a life saving tool.