Senior agency staff ‘earning themselves out of a job’, claims PRIA consultancy group chair
L:R Benson, Cullen, Vineberg, Moore, Rugge Price
The chairman of the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s Registered Consultancy Group has suggested PR agencies are sometimes happy to see the back of senior staff because they are not worth the money they are paid and are “earning themselves out of a job”.
Adam Benson told the CommsCon conference, in Sydney yesterday, that high staff turnover rates can sometimes be a blessing for agencies if the right people quit.
Speaking on a panel of industry leaders, Benson said there are “people you want to keep” but others, including those who receive annual pay rises but who have outgrown their usefulness, who companies are pleased to see leave.
Benson said data analysed by PRIA showe that turnover rates in the industry vary between 15 per cent and 30 per cent, depending on the size of the agency.
“Don’t forget there are two types of turnover,” he told the room of PR professionals. “There are people you want to move on. There are people who outgrow their roles or outgrow their productivity and you are paying them more every year, but they are not actually billing more, adding more value or bringing more money into your agency. So they are essentially earning themselves out of a job.”
On the flip side there are people you “absolutely want to keep in the business”, he added, including “seniors who have quite good delegated authority”.
Benson’s comments came during a wide ranging discussion on a panel which included Ogilvy chief executive Kieran Moore, Public Relations Council chair Melissa Cullen, GE branding and communications vice president Emma Rugge Price and PRIA NSW president and national board member John Vineburg.
Both retaining and recruiting talent was identified as a problem area for the industry, with Moore, who said Ogilvy has a staff churn rate of 30 per cent, describing it is one of the “biggest challenges” facing agencies, particularly as they begin to diversify into other areas, including media buying and creative work.
There is a “massive responsibility” on the industry associations “and us as professionals” to coach and train young talent, she added, particularly in such a rapidly changing environment.
“The biggest challenge for agencies… is finding the right people that you need for an agency that’s going to be doing a bit of media buying, a bit of creative, a bit of work on issues and crisis and moving into some of the technical areas where we may not have been,” Moore said.
She also questioned the quality of university courses which are relying on the same books – albeit updated versions – used by students three decades ago.
Any institution which pretends to be across all aspects of the evolving industry dynamics “would be lying”, Moore told delegates, as even those already in the workplace are struggling to keep pace. Nevertheless, she stressed there needs to be an improvement in curriculums.
“We are spending a lot of time with heads of communications departments trying to talk to them about their curriculum because they are using text books that are version 15 of the same book I had in 1984. So there is a curriculum gap,” Moore said.
Earlier, the PR boss expressed frustration at the debate over the expansion of media agencies into PR and urged the industry to “get off the hobby horse”.
“Just run your own race,” she said.
Steve Jones
The flip side of this discussion is that senior PR practitioners will earn a lot more money by leaving these agencies and working as a consultant. They will also have a much better work/life balance.
Many clients are beginning to understand that when they employ large PR agencies with large fees to match, often they get lumped with junior staff who have no clue. Not only that, most have no established relationships with media and other influencers.
There are real benefits to be had by employing consultants who’ve left big agencies. They have less overheads, so therefore they are more affordable to engage. They also have years of experience and relationships that a 23 year old agency employee could never match.
So if I understand correctly there’s a talent shortage but the sooner we can put older practitioners out to pasture the better.
Is that your key message Adam?
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The other flip side is senior PR practitioners earn a lot more money going in-house!
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#PRFail
what an utterly bizarre position to advocate – that the industry wants people to leave “because they’re senior and we can’t say no to a pay rise request”
instead of sustaining an environment where you are continually creating competition for yourself by letting senior people go, how about you manage your people better by motivating them and linking payrises to productivity improvements/billings and other metrics?
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I agree with Drew Lambert and that was certainly my position when I was made redundant during the GFC.
As a freelance consultant I also often see corporates fall to the charms of the senior staff only to end up with a junior once the ink dries. I’ve even lost clients who thought I was too small as a soloist, only to have them eventually return and ask me to fix the mess left by their decision to go with a bigger agency.
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“PRIA president and national board member John Vineburg” – I thought Mike Watson was PRIA president – or has there been another spill this week at PRIA?
Those at the vanguard of public relations appreciate the industry is unrecognisable now compared with five years ago. Relying on concepts like Grunig’s Four Models of Public Relations and the subsequent Excellence Model from the 80s and 90s just won’t cut it. The fragmenting media landscape changed that. More significantly social media has changed that, forever.
PR practitioners need to keep up with their professional development throughout their careers to ensure they’re relevant today. Alastair McCapra CEO of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in the UK recently commented: “Qualifications are great but knowledge degrades. If we are not [continuously] learning and developing ultimately we can’t be professional because we’ll end up trying to solve tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s techniques.”
It does seem crazy to link pay rises to tenure rather than ability, relevance, and other metrics. Linking it with CPD would be a start. Not enforcing CPD means you get good PR practitioners and bad ones. Those who strive to innovate. To push the discipline forward. But equally those who get stuck in a moment in time. Fossilised.
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Hi Scott,
It should have read PRIA NSW president. Copy now corrected.
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
“Never wrong for long” cheers Nic
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