Moderator: Nick Band, Founder, Berlin PR
Speakers: Maxim Behar, CEO, M3 Communications Group; Barbara Phillips, Director, Brownstone Communications; Owen Cullen, Managing Director, Cullen Communications; Enitan Kehinde, General Manager, BHM UK.
Nick
Well, this panel today is going to be discussing one of the burning issues of our generation really, is how to retain and it’s incredibly important because we are losing the back door. We’re not bringing enough through the front door. The retention strategies are all important. I have a panel of four people here; you can only see two but two I have virtually untold then will be period appearing on the video shortly. First of all, the right is Enitan, now she has had a remarkable career; just five years ago she was an intern at BlackHouse Media and is now the general manager and lead consultant with BHM UK with her previous work focussed primarily across food and drinks industry. BHM is an Anglo-Nigerian operation, introducing UK clients to Nigeria and vice versa. If I may introduce Owen Cullen. Now, if you need a PR company in the Republic of Ireland, there’s only one place to go and that is to Cullen Communications and earnestly the managing director of public communication and is currently the chair at the Irish PRCA: it’s one of the most long-established PR agencies in in the Republic. It was founded by his father who is probably watching on horror. The next panelist I’d like to introduce you to is on your screens now. This is Barbara Phillips. Now Barbara Phillips is a skilled, very experienced strategic consultant but also, she is a racial justice activist, and she advises organisations in all aspects. Now like most successful people, like some successful people, she is involved in lots of other things. For example, she is the chair of the PRCA is race and ethnicity equitable. She’s a board member of the PRCA and interestingly enough, I didn’t know this, but she’s also a board member of the motorsport UK racial diversity subcommittee, a very interesting talk earlier. And finally, unfortunately, cannot be here either in person either because he has tested positive for COVID-19, Maxim Behar. Now, you’ve probably heard of him, he is quite well known. He is the founder and CEO of agency called M3 Communications, based in Bulgaria and he is one of the leading lights in the world of PR and is past president of this very organisation, and he has a number of honorary positions one particularly caught my interest but he’s the Honorary Consul General for the Seychelles. We’ll be playing a short video message from him shortly. So, can we start off with you Enitan?
Enitan
Yes, thank you. The past 24 months have seen public relations, not just public relations, but all of us across the world shaken by the things that have happened. It’s shown us the importance of being prepared. And so, why I personally like this session is because it shows us that we need to prepare for the nearest future. And it’s also aligned with the project that we had worked on in the BHM, it’s called The Future project. And about 60% of our consultants put together; what they think the future will look like and how we can better prepare for it. But one thing that’s very important for me is agility. I think that especially the project management or use a lot of practices that are very agile for public relations with we’re sort of playing a tag team, which is following what’s going on what’s important to us is, you know, delivering on our client’s objectives, managing the expectations and also monitoring the trends. Well, why aren’t we the ones predicting where these trends are? While we’re the ones you know, advising, we’re advising our clients, we’re not telling them, this is what’s going to happen, and this is how you should prepare for it. And even in doing that, how are we ourselves also, you know, preparing our profession for the future. So that’s the first thing for me, another very key thing for me is technology. Yesterday, we had conversation around communications and technology and what’s very important and what I like to see with PR agencies is we need to start to look at ourselves as not just another agency, we are companies and we need to sort of position ourselves as product companies, what are we doing, what are we building, right to help solve the problems that we’re going through? A lot of the things that we go through as PR people we can fix. We have the medicine, right? So, there are a lot of problems that we have. So, we need to sort of position ourselves as product companies like a BHM and we’re building a number of products that we believe will help us solve the problems that we are going through. So, for example, I think it was Femi yesterday in his session. He was speaking about Plaqad, a company that we started as a tech company, that sort of builds platforms that would help us solve a lot of issues that we’re going through. So, we have a press officer, we’re launching very soon, and it’s something that we have sort of designed to fit PR particularly with the problems that we’re going through, how can we fix them? What are the solutions? What can we do to sort of help shape the future of public relations? And in doing a lot of these things, we also need to understand that as we are helping our clients, as we are helping prepare the future, we need to be able to build a team that can do these things and that is what it boils down to – the biggest problem. I think it’s been spoken also from yesterday to today. Staff retention, why is it a big problem? I think the ICCO global report that was launched yesterday also mentioned it and in Nigeria that’s what we do at BHM in Africa also plays heavily, heavily on staff retention. It’s a big issue. Well, when people ask me that question, I like to look at how we approach client retention or BHM staff retention. And we see it as another avenue to sort of position us to tell our story. So, it’s not a thing of you coming or you start to understand who we are from the first touch points from the first address from the first message that you see that we’re looking for people you see sort of understand the kind of company that you’re coming into. So, we look at it as we’re not just hiring staff, but we’re actively building there’s something I was discussing with you earlier. It’s more around, it’s more on building superheroes. So, we like to see ourselves as you know, we’re helping our clients, we’re helping people to understand the world generally. So, we like to make sure that because I think that’s something you said earlier, Nick as well as we they’re much we have a scarcity of talents to pick from right well, why don’t we work on actually building superstars? Why don’t we work on actually building people that will take over this industry from us? We do have the BHM waveguiding. A lot of my staff on my team ability and UK are relatively new to PR. And they said it’s a very strategic move because we feel like when we do bring these young people on, it’s our responsibility. I think it was what Ayeni was saying yesterday as well about communication. It’s our responsibility to show them the way. It’s not responsible to show them this is the right way to do PR. This is the ethical way to do PR and then they can go from there. And there’s also something very particular about the agent that I like to talk about. It’s something I think agencies in the room do as well. It’s also focusing on the 5% that bring 95% value at the end of the day. You can’t be afraid of talent turnover. People will leave your company, people will come to your company; people will leave, you can’t be afraid of that. What’s important is to understand why they’re leaving. Is there a huge problem? Is it a company problem, or is it the problem and then you sort of fix those problems as well? Or what we like to do is to sort of build people. So, I came into BHMS telling you my story earlier, I came into BHS. As an intern, I did the internship for about seven months, and fast forward five years later, I’m here. It wouldn’t be possible without that strategy that we have to build people. So, we’re building superstars. We’re building people that even when they do me the fly that flag of “yes, I’m proud of where I come from. I’m proud of where I grew. And you know, I’m sort of growing the industry as well.” So, we’re not just growing, our business is very particular for us at BHM. Grow the entire industry as well. So, I think that that’s the strategy that PR companies across the world should take on. Don’t look for that perfect person, you’re really never going to find it. It’s almost like going into a relationship or a marriage. You can’t find the perfect marriage. You have to work to build that. So, it’s important, I think, for me and for everyone else to sort of try to build and not go for the superstars that you’re looking for.
Nick
This is really interesting because there is a shortage of PR talent. What I’m hearing here is that instead of hiring PR people we hire people, and turn them into PR people which is, given the shortage of talent, probably a very sensible strategy. I can hand it over to Owen.
Owen
I’ll pick up on what you said there. Around, I suppose the transition of the progression of people, so I think like what we’re seeing in Ireland, certainly we surveyed all the members of PRCA recently, and four of the top four, five sorry for the top five concerns were all around talent. So, it was like talent retention, talent attraction, salary demands, and staff engagement. And so why is that like? So, there are people coming into the industry. They’re joining as interns as good college programmes. People from executives, but then we’re finding that middle management side of things, that’s when people depart. And they’re being certainly in Ireland are being wiped out by technology companies. They’re seen as very attractive places to go to verse Googles and Facebooks and places like that. So, I suppose why is that happening is something that we really have to consider. I think people have been very focused on certain industries. People have to come from journalism schools, they have come from PR schools. I think your idea of employing people based on the person is the right way. Because it really comes down to like the skill set people bring to the table now are completely changing. And it used to be my dad was still intimate already English language, you have to have an A and you’re leaving cert in school. That world has changed now how we communicate is evolving, adapting what you’re writing in 140-character tweets is just as important to what you’re writing in the press release. And I think even though communicating verbally, a lot of what we do is online, no one worried we would have read stuff at home is the render silos are looking from the computer screens, so they’re not getting used to that human interaction or talking to people on the telephone. The whole idea of where media relations is all about was picking up the telephone. So, I think the opportunity for us as an industry is to broaden our horizons there and bring people in from other industries, like people who have been here that were accountants or solicitors. They bring a different school of thought. I think one of the challenges we discussed at the board the other day was like, how do we get younger people involved in Eniko and then, um, work or older people trying to solve younger people’s problems, and it’s getting their opinion of where they see themselves go. And I think there’s a lot of, I guess, challenges of what people are passionate about. So, like ESG and climate change, that’s all come to the fore. People are very passionate about things. How they pursue a career in that, but I think we need to make sure that he or she communicates. Communications is a really appropriate industry to follow that passion, follow that pursuit of passion. And I think more often, I think, if you’re often just not under Title, others like skills we look for, those are critical skills and I think there’s so much information out there around data analysis, and we really have got to use that.
Nick
Let’s go back to the issue of why people are actually leaving. I did a little bit of research not so long ago. And there are two major reasons. One is they want to do something more meaningful. Now, I don’t know whether that’s a reflection on the PR industry as a whole natural sort of logical progression through life, but something more meaningful. A lot of them were joining sort of channels not for profit, some were going in house. The other reason they gave is that about 30% of people say it’s no fun anymore. And that comes to a point I tend to name on a lot of other PR is metamorphosing from an art into a science. It’s becoming much more science oriented, much more holistic, much more involved around and tough. And it wasn’t my day, and it was quite fun. I didn’t think you’d say that was a contribution to some of this leaving the industry.
Owen
Yeah, people are looking. And I think that there’s a great running nation and so people are living and producing excitement. And I think there’s different walks of life and I think, quite often speak from agency London. Certainly, the Irish market companies. So, rest, procreate rational if you’re a team of 15-16 people, and so therefore to kind of dip their toes in that and to go off to a larger company, where they’re one of the reasons and then they quickly realise Well, actually, I don’t really want to be one of 1000s I want to get back into that smaller agency. And then they kind of because the client director so some people are coming back like so it’s not it’s not that they’re walking industry altogether. They’re just getting an experience I think in different sectors, and I don’t know what kind of that he has a little bit of how we can combat that.
Nick
And is it still fun?
Owen
Well, I’d like to think so.
Enitan
Well, I think that we need to sort of vary our staff’s learning experiences and also the tasks that they’re asked to do. So, what I like to do is to because you know that it can get routine, I was speaking with the leader entrepreneur last week, and she mentioned to me the reason why she left her job is because it just became routine. She could do it in sleep, she could do it from anywhere. It just wasn’t fun. It wasn’t interesting and I think it also boils down to the generation that we have now the Gen z’s. They don’t over and over and over again. They want life to be fun. They want life to be interesting. So, what I like to do is to expose them to other assays that are really getting your job done. There are also other ways to do it. There are also things to explore to get your job done. So, it’s just a very they’re learning experiences very the things that they are exposed to the tasks that they have to do. And when they have a new challenge every other week or every other day. It makes it a bit more interesting. So, we can say okay, yes, this is what I achieved because I was explaining this next month. This is what I also went cheap because I was exposed to this. And at the end of the day, they’re well rounded and they understand what they have to do and are business savvy. So, it helps them develop ourselves and he also isn’t doing something new every other week. So, it’s varying the learning experience and understanding that this generation is different from the generation we had before. They’re not, they’re not going to take what you give them hook, line, and sinker. I have people ask me, why are we doing this? Why is this? You need to have these answers. You want to challenge them as well the way they challenge you. So, we just need to adjust.
Nick
Let’s bring Barbara in; are you still having fun in your business?
Barbara
I do enjoy it but there’s two points. Two points that I wanted to make. And it’s like two ends of the spectrum. First of all, I think for the younger people coming into the industry, I think we have to have fully developed human beings. I think some of a lot of what my colleagues have been speaking about is the personal development side of things. They have to know what they’re interested in. They should have some activities. They should try and use what they’re interested in as a person to kind of feel their career and that will keep the interest in whichever organisation they take up. So, you know, dependent, they can be then sector specific, they can just have a driving interest in, you know, whether it’s inability, whether it’s the motorsport industry, whatever it is. I think we need to encourage young people to fully develop their thoughts about what they’re interested in rather than just bowing to peer pressure’s number one. And on the other hand, I’ve had some very interesting conversations with agencies about transferable skills. Now, I mean, you know, you we have mentioned transferable skills, but I’m, I’m thinking of older, we always kind of focus on interns getting young people training them, that there’s some really amazing talent out there who haven’t been in PR who have amazing transferable skills that could come in at a director level and embrace so much more to the organisation and to clients from lived experiences and just what they’ve been doing in other sectors. Now, if you think about it, if people are leaving PR to go to other sectors surely it can work the other way. So, my points in terms of what we can do certainly look at older transferable skills. And when we’re taking on new younger people, help them to develop their own thoughts and feelings. So, they are kind of fully developed human beings when they come into the organisations and they’ll have a better idea of what they like if they know what they like, and are likely to stay longer.
Nick
I was going to ask you, what other industries you think we ought to be recruiting from, I thought perhaps teaching?
Barbara
I think there’s so many crossovers because it’s kind of our fault. We delineated this sector and this guy, the teacher , leads your attribute, expertise. It’s so much greyer now. It’s so much more blurred. And the whole aspect of the customer being a client and being a stable you know, that’s all one continuous. So, I think it is great. I think many people don’t sector anyway; nursing is another one. It sounds far fetched, but it’s not if you get down to the core skills. There are so many other sectors that you can transfer into PR, and I don’t think that you absolutely have to have a PR degree to work in PR. It’s great if you don’t do what I’m saying to absolutely learn the skills, but I don’t think that’s an absolute requisite.
Nick
Anyone want to come back to that?
Enitan
Yes, I agree. You don’t need a PR degree to have a successful career in PR. And I also agree with what she said about transfer of knowledge from another industry to PR. I think one of our students, who’s also here used to work in banking for years and he moved to comms into PR so you can’t and then I think we also can hire from tech as well. You can’t have a one size fits all anymore. Right? So, the one person who’s a consumer can also be an appealing person can also be so we have people that can apply themselves in different fields. I don’t think we like you saying teaching is fine. It boils down to who the individual is, who the person is, does this person have a passion for this thing that this person wants to do? And if the person, does you learn as you go along, I’m still learning, and I think we all are so it’s more about the individual than the field they’re coming from.
Barbara
I think out there in recruitment campaigns, talk about those coming into the industry. That should be a key message. So, it’s clear. You don’t have a PR degree, but you are welcome. And I’m not sure that’s really clear right now.
Nick
No, I don’t think that is the message at all because I work in recruitment as well as and I’m constantly going by the old rule. So instead of looking for someone who’s got experience in PR, I should be just looking for someone who’s got experience in life.
Barbara
And what can they bring? What can they offer the client? You know, the sector is I think I’d say this whole developed human being as you know, they’ve lived and let’s not underestimate the lived experiences, because you know, that’s massive. There’s so much there. Remember, it reminds me of anyone who’s a parent. And then we often used to say aces often say to a line manager I work for if you want somebody to organise any event, get a pen, because they are completely organised to get anything done. You need to be organised and then the skills are transferable skills.
Nick
Now, we’ll just run a video we’ve got from Maxim.
Maxim
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My sincere apologies. I couldn’t attend my favourite and lovely ICCO summit in person. So, let’s talk about talents. I do believe talents are made in-House and I’ll tell why later. Let me make my point on the current environment, not only communications environment, the current environment, the one which pushed us to stay home, which pushed us to stay away from our offices to use our living rooms or bedrooms or gardens or terraces and to work with clients to work with our teams, which is much more important to work with our partners, vendors and stakeholders, from the power laptops, or monitors. It has changed dramatically. It’s a huge change. And it’s a very big concern for our things and the talents that we have in our offices, and we work with. First of all, our profession, our business became very functional, and we moved our work culture. Why? Because all we know is that there is a very dynamic and intensive merge between the main elements of public communications, advertising, public relations, and this is a very dynamic merge in the future, but very far away from today. It will be just from business and you know that even within our teams, even with between our partners, there is a huge discussion and debate which will be the to lead the bigger and the new merged already business the advertising, they say yes, because we have the media buy-in we have the graphic designs we have the video production. Digital’s Of course they claim because they say how can you do business with us? Yeah, how can the business without applications top us and this and that, but I’m strongly convinced, and I’m sure that you think the same, it will be us, the public relations experts. Why? And there is a simple reason. Because we are the creators of the content. We are the masters of the content. So, this fact creates a completely different environment in a way the current talents. Number three educator is a big movement within our business saying that the client is the right, the client is the boss, the client is our God. Everything from the client, what I would say, yeah, the way we should do everything for me because our colleagues, our teams are much more important than any clients the environment within the office, the ethics, the transparency, the way we understand each other the way and we may have the magazines, or we may have the next class. Without Them, we cannot serve any client and we don’t find that we have the best team or clients who come to us. So, this is one of the most important points in business. And really, we should put a lot into educating, maintaining how to develop our talents within the team. I will never ever in history hire a manager outside the company because if I see just one percentage that have the abilities and the qualities to be developed as a manager, then I’m talking with him or her mostly because it’s our business. I’m pretty sure that very soon this will be how to create a zoom team or team or teams’ team, whatever. But what’s important to the manager is his or her employees and talents. If the managers are ethical, transparent, professional, professional, rational to the themes balanced and be sure they trust you that will make the company they will stay here. They will make a better team while they will have Ronaldo as a model, a good manager. So, I’ll be very happy to listen to the rest of the opinions on our discussion today. Enjoy the ICCO summit, the greatest PR business in the world.
Nick
Notice that Max has written a book on his bookshelf.
This brings me to an issue I wanted to discuss with everyone is the issue of money. Are we paying our people? Are we paying them enough? Obviously, the public relations industry is relatively well paid when there is someone in nursing or hospitality. But is it enough? You see some incredible figures going out now? Because of the talent shortage? There are people being offered 20-30% More than they would normally expect or they’re even being given golden handshakes. I mean, do you think money is an issue? Are we paying people enough?
Owen
It’s a challenge. I think no disrespect to us. Recruitment there. I don’t believe everything recruiters say when it comes to salaries. Because it is very common for people to get those phone calls. I think that is certainly where my belief is there. And I think it’s an undervaluing of the role of communications as played over the last number of years. The rates we get the errors we compete for it’s kind of has always been a bit of a race to the bottom. And I think some of the work that clients value or don’t value and there is a real challenge of a business model to be able to pay out above average salaries. And at the same time, your clients are looking to play below average rates. So, there is that squeezed in the middle and not to mention everything else to go on over the time. But I think, I guess, and that’s actually one of the conclusions we had on Tuesday was maybe salaries. So, salary is an issue, and we have to look at our income. And I think how can we value it better? And I think that comes back into the scale of this the wider I think people coming in from other industries. good approach because if we compare ourselves to management consultants who charge big figures for the legal profession to charge big figures, big salaries, why are we a quarter or a third of what they charge when we do a very, very similar role? If not even more powerful in many ways? So, it can be an independent come in because it’s about outcomes and open rather than necessary outputs. So how can we measure the role we do is actually delivering multi-millions to your clients and they should be paying based on the value so is there a transition how as we as an industry can transition from, we like we’ve all smoke around EVs are a thing of the past. This hourly rate is a big issue for me, and how can we put that as more value-based pricing, if we have value-based pricing? We can actually pay salaries to the person that that individual based on the value that brings to the table. And so, it’s like, I think, yeah, I think there are people following money, but that’s not the only thing you’re following as well. And I think some people had examples of that. And they are willing to take lower pay to do things. I think us as an industry have to have to shift that value, we bring to do that.
Nick
Yeah, so we can only start talking about reviewing salaries once we’ve reviewed fees?
Owen
I think so. There is that squeeze and that is the challenge of running a business.
Barbara
Can I comment on that? Because I think I agree to a certain extent, but I also think that people, young people, especially those led by industry, and it happens across advertising and even financial settings. It’s not only the money that comes in because it’s also the distribution of because it’s quite difficult if you’re struggling on whatever you’re struggling on, and you know, your CEO is on hundreds of thousands. But you feel like you’re doing all the work. I mean, this is my anecdotal thing. You’re doing a lot of the work. You’re grinding out you’re saying being late at night and yeah, that’s common in the UK, but I think especially in our industry, because of client focus. We are working so closely with the client. I think it needs to look a little bit at distribution in terms of, you know, where the money when the money comes in, that revenue comes in how it’s distributed, popular, I’m sure. I think it’s. And then the second thing is, as I’m looking from the outside, you know, we had some results published recently on pay gaps, and the ethnicity and gender pay gap are quite huge in PR and comms and that’s only like, deter people. From coming in your sizing but yet you know the colleague sitting next to you at the station midday, definitely a diverse person who can fall for no good reason. That’s all so off putting as I think the distribution piece also looks at our pay gaps and at least we should close up by the paid gaps especially ethnic pay gap and gender pay gap. And that, you know, that looks a little more, I don’t know, more purposeful.
Nick
In order to aspire to that position progressing, the company might want to be pulled by those whose greatest, greatest salary so if they were flattened out, we equalize maybe that attraction wouldn’t be that it’s a moot point. But worth recording.
Barbara
You know, just remember that not everyone is motivated by money.
Nick
No, but you make the assumption that being a creative director is actually quite interesting as well, rather than we prevent anyway. Are there any questions? From the floor? I can’t see obviously this broadcast of the merchant zoom questions any hand raises?
Q&A
Question about skills. There’s a lot of talk often of attracting people from different sectors. But what about investing more in training and giving people skills that you already have in things like technology is the one that often gets mentioned? We’re desperate to attract people from tech but why can’t we do that in reverse and give the tech skills to the people that already have PR skills?
Nick
That is a really interesting question. Also, what are we doing in schools to encourage people to go into PR? My son is in school doing his GCSE. He gets talked about going into law into medicine and never gets a PR person talking to school, coming into marketing. So, does anyone have any?
Enitan
I’d like to say something on that issue as well. It’s all courses thank God for the CIPR, see IPR. And a lot of other courses that are around but we thought about and we’re building a tool. That’s it’s going to be called the BHM Qomms. And it’s a tool that will sort of build courses and trainings that are tied to what PR people are actually looking to learn because it’s, I remember being new in the industry and struggling to find things and this is me that studied PR struggling to find practical, practical things to learn about the job a lot of things I had to learn on the job, but like Rob asked earlier what how are we going to work on transferring knowledge to people knowledge that we have all the other generations have? So we’re building this tool that would not only provide those trainings and those educational resources, but it also will solve a lot of problems, a lot of these problems that we have in PR so I think that it’s not it’s not annoying to just expect people to know get these things just by walking with you in a company or just by being in that company. We have to be very conscious about actively transferring knowledge to these new guys that are coming in.
Barbara
Can I just mention that, you know, the PRCA does have training, introductions to practical there’s some great it’s worth looking at? You know, if you’re with a big agency or even in house, or something that should be part of your package to be sponsored for the continuing personal development. There definitely is availability. A lot of them since we became a kind of a virtual industry. A lot of them are virtual, I think 80% are still virtual. So, wherever you are in the world you want to, it’s always worth investing if you have a good look. There’s always something out there but a lot of practical ones so but to your point, it’s really important that we do the in house video, I think you agree that you know, rather than letting the talent seep out of you know, through the cracks, that’s a way to retain them is giving them the skills that they need to keep moving with the times.