Friday, March 13, 2015

FIR Presents Inside PR #403: PR has an HR problem

FIR Presents Inside PRYes, PR has an HR problem.

There are two things at play:

  1. A recent Bloom & Gross study shows there still is a salary gap between men and women in the PR industry…sometimes as much as $42,000 per year.
  2. A CIPR study shows there is a major threat to the PR industry because of the lack of digital skills at the very senior levels.

On the first, we are an industry that is female-dominated. It’s anywhere between 73 and 85 percent female. And yet…

Most of the most senior-level positions, particularly inside PR firms, are held by men.

As male business leaders, I challenged Martin and Joe to think about how they hire—and compensate—their female employees. It led to a nice discussion.

The other issue at play is the lack of evolution in the PR industry, particularly at the senior levels.

Paul Sutton shared the following screen grab in his blog post, “Experience Can’t Be More Than Skill in PR. Can It?”

ScreenShot

The industry, has a whole, has a very low barrier to entry. That’s a problem. It’s also a problem that anyone with a computer considers themselves a communicator.

And now we have to contend with the digital communications experts that all are younger than 30 years old because the most experienced practitioners haven’t learned the new skills necessary to take the industry to a new place.

The conversation gets a little heated—not because we disagree, necessarily—but because we are passionate on the topic.

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR: Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

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FIR presents Inside PR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years.

Posted by shel on 03/13 at 12:17 PM
Show Notes • Inside PR • (0) Comments • Permalink