This week in PR (3 September)

Profession and ethics

• Lucy Beldon: How to improve accessibility in communications (1 September)
  ‘While it may feel as though we are living in a digital-first world, to be truly inclusive and accessible consideration must be given to how to include and engage those on both sides of the digital divide.’
• Stuart Bruce: PR ethics – PRCA and CIPR warn UK government to tell the truth (28 August)
  ‘Both UK PR bodies have rebuked the UK government’s Department for Health and Social Care for breaching PR ethics by issuing a ‘New Hospital Programme Communications Playbook’ to NHS trusts that tells them to deliberately lie and mislead by pretending that major refurbishments or newly built wings at existing hospitals are ‘new hospitals’.’

Academic and education

• Dafydd Rees: “How to Listen” – Think Again, the power of knowing what you don’t know by Adam Grant (2 September)
  ‘The term is “motivational listening.” It involves asking open-ended questions, engaging in reflective listening which empowers a person’s desire and ability to change.’

ESG, corporate and financial

• Henry Adefope: Financial services companies should listen to the voices within (2 September)
  ‘Regulators are encouraging whistleblowers, and this is of growing concern to some of the larger organisations.’

• Louise Nicolson: Tug of War (no date)
  ‘Meaningful business sustainability is focused, innovative and complex enough to address business’ five capitals – the financial, manufactured, social, natural and human cost and impact of your company. This takes time and resources. And bravery.’
• Andrew Adie: Purpose on Payday (27 August)
  ‘If business wants to avoid being accused of greenwash then it has to have a plan to make meaningful, positive change to the environment by cutting carbon output, switching to sustainable resources, cutting waste and pollution and helping drive sustainable consumption – not just saying it aspires to do so in 30 years.’

Consulting, teams and careers

We are PR & Communications Employers that Pay their Interns.

We’re proud to support @PRCA_HQ and @prweekuknews's campaign to end unpaid internships.

There’s no excuse to not pay interns for their valuable work. Find out more: https://t.co/ptN8OCvoyY#payinterns #internships pic.twitter.com/HTPM6Q6KLW

— FleishmanHillard UK (@fleishmanUK) September 2, 2021

• Adam Driver: What the hell am I doing this for? (31 August)
  ‘I’m going to revert to four days a week – starting with saying no to projects that (in my heart of hearts) know would be a stretch for me. Fridays and weekends are time for me and the family.’

Wellbeing, gender and diversity

• Rhea Mathew: The only one in the room – reflections on diversity and inclusion (31 August)
  ‘I’m a South Asian Indian millennial woman, and a few years ago I was the only one in a room filled with people who didn’t look, talk or act like me. I felt like no one was paying attention to what I had to say because I wasn’t one of them; as a result I kept questioning why I was there and simply nodded along to what was being discussed.’

Public and third sectors

Ethics in Public Relations are vital to public trust, and the Government Communications Service should be primary upholders of those professional ethics. Call me naive, but I’m actually really shocked by this. https://t.co/lRx3A5EsiQ

— Polly Cziok (@PollyCziok) August 27, 2021

• Dan Slee: LONG READ: STRESS, ABUSE AND LIFESAVING RESULTS. The impact of the pandemic on the UK public sector country-by-country and sector-by-stress (27 August)
  ‘From June 2020, I’ve been running a tracker survey on how the pandemic has been affecting public sector communicators across the UK. In this post, I’ve taken the chance to go through 19,920 individual responses from 1,660 communicators over a 12-month period.’

Politics, public affairs and public sphere

Former Conservative rebel joins Instinctif | PR Week https://t.co/68d6I499Lk via @prweekuknews #comms

— PRWeek UK (@prweekuknews) September 2, 2021

• Scott Harker: Schools return: a window into the Government’s COVID headache (2 September)
  ‘Schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are returning with relaxed social distancing measures and a requirement that students only need to self-isolate in the event of a positive COVID-19 test result.’
• Nick Barron: Scientists are polarising the public (no date)
  ‘Reaching Net Zero will require sacrifice. But, as governments have found time and again — on issues ranging from house building to adult social care — agreeing on the problem is the easy bit. Building support for a specific plan is the hard part.’
• Alex Malouf: Qatar’s reputation building during the Afghanistan crisis (27 August)
  ‘I often snipe at government communications in the Gulf, for so many reasons. But Qatar’s Foreign Ministry has shown what a world-class media team can do. They’ve done their country proud.’

Risk, crisis and reputation

• Amanda Coleman: Be prepared, be crisis ready (31 August)
  ‘Having a plan is the foundation of your crisis readiness and means you will have thought things through ahead of time. Nobody wants to think about problems happening but life is uncertain and changeable we just need to accept that and prepare our response.’

Planning, insight, measurement and evaluation

• Rebecca Roberts and Harriet Small with Paul Stollery: We love you, but we’re not buying it [podcast] (no date)
  ‘The key thing is: don’t wait until the end to measure. You need to go back to the start: why are we doing this?’

Internal communication

• Jenni Field: From panic to purpose in a post-pandemic world

  (1 September)
  ‘Make sure we are finding time to redefine internal communication; redefining the purpose of the function; being very clear about what it is we are there to do.’

Technology, media and digital

• Emma Drake: Ep 38. Summer ‘hacks’ series: Using audio and voice effectively [podcast] (2 September)
  ‘You no longer need to write a blog. Voice notes and audio can help you create quick and easy audio for your business.’
• Shauna Madden: From swipe-ups to stickers: Instagram’s newest update (1 September)
  ‘Since August 30th, Instagram has been rolling out the retirement of the tried-and-tested swipe-up link and replacing it with clickable stickers. It might not sound like much, but it’s a pretty major change.’
• Gemma Storey: How can we limit our exposure to social media negativity? (31 August)
  ‘What can we do to combat the effect that negative social media content has on us – especially when we have to use social for work?’
• Chloe Michel: Inspiring Goodies – Remote Work, Ted Lasso and Sideways (31 August)
  ‘One of my favourite quotes is: “To do this [remote] well, you have to be always on, always working to keep culture fresh and sticky – that is, keep it so interesting and engaging that no one will want to leave… we both found that being the CEO of a remote company is exhausting”.’