Professional PR Development. Why bother?

Let’s talk about professional PR development. Why bother? That’s the question that started the following PR conversation between Kevin Ruck and Heather Yaxley. If you have views on this topic, then add a comment here or on social media.

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Dr Kevin Ruck
Co-founder, PR Academy

With PR bodies increasingly focused on the importance of raising standards in professionalism and ethics, why are some (or most?) practitioners not that bothered about career development?

I have seen a senior practitioner almost brag that he didn’t have time to read books about practice. I have heard others vehemently dismiss learning about theory as a waste of time – arguing that practitioners should just focus on the ‘real’ world. I have seen people openly state that they have no qualifications but lots of experience, where having ‘no qualifications’ almost becomes a badge of honour. I see agencies offering communication research and audit services when they appear to have no-one in their team with any qualifications in research.

This anecdotal evidence is, of course, not enough to make general statements about professionalism in public relations and communication management.

So, let’s quickly examine some of the data from recent industry based research:

• 13 percent of respondents judge the professional standards of PR practitioners by levels of training and qualifications. Source: Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) State of the Profession Report (2016).
• Analysis based on interviews with 40 CEOS highlights that “CEOs frequently return to the idea that communication directors urgently needed to enhance their core leadership skills. As organisations have become commercially and culturally anchored to open communication, it has never been more necessary for communications directors to be able to harness that capability on behalf of the business. Several said that the profession still had serious standards to raise in this regard”. Source: VMA Group Report: Beyond Communications (2017) (italics added).
• 69 percent of respondents invest only one hour per week or less in professional development (19 percent invest no time at all). Source: VMA Group Report: Inside Insight (2017).
• 68 percent of respondents had done no training in last 12 months. Source: VMA Group Report: Inside Insight (2017).

In addition to this data, in the 2016-17 reporting year (ending in February 2017) 2227 CIPR members completed a CPD record (22 percent of members). Given that the PRCA’s CPD scheme only started in March 2017 the number of completed CPD records there may be similar (or less). In overall terms, as a broad guestimate, around 5 percent of PR and communication managers are probably recording CPD (based on an estimated 83, 000 PR people in the UK). That does not mean that only 5 percent are actively engaged in professional development.

Focusing just on CPD recording as an indicator of levels of professional development would be a very limited approach.

However, some of the secondary data cited above suggests that levels of professional PR development may be relatively weak. Further research, for example, to compare levels of professional development with that in other professions such as marketing, management or HR would be useful. Research into attitudes towards professional development in PR would also be helpful. However, even on this limited data analysis, it’s understandable that industry bodies are working hard to raise awareness of the importance of professional development.

Although the situation appears to be serious, it is changing.

The number of PR degrees available in the UK has grown considerably in the last decade. Hundreds of PR people are doing training courses with CIPR, PRCA and other reputable training providers every year. Around 5,000 practitioners have studied with PR Academy since it was formed in 2007 and many employers now expect candidates to have a post-graduate marketing, PR or specialist communication qualification.

Professionalism could, therefore be on the move. Indeed with CIPR president, Sarah Hall’s focus on establishing public relations as a strategic management function the importance of qualifications and relevant business knowledge are paramount. Being strategic entails (amongst many other things) being reflective. Experience that lacks reflection may simply be poor practice that that repeats the same mistakes. As clued-up management consultants start to offer PR services, it is clear that experience alone may well not be sufficient any more.

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Response by Dr Heather Yaxley

Kevin – thank you for setting out an evidence base to demonstrate that there’s some way to go to ensure continuous professional development (CPD) is a core focus of public relations practice. My PhD research tallies with this data, as I found a tendency to rely on happenstance and opportunism in career development. Similarly, from an historical perspective, Professor Tom Watson has observed that attitudes towards the impact of technology on PR practice have been most frequently to ignore it or take a “cautious, sense-making view”.

To return to the “why bother?” question, we could argue that as the context in which we operate in an ever changing one, there is little point in setting out goals for CPD, career planning or indeed, being an early adopter of technology. Or perhaps, we could conclude that PR is a risk adverse occupation, where ‘old habits die hard’, and established repertoires endure despite the need to learn new responses to changing situations. We can see this with resistance to abandon the flawed advertising-equivalent measuring of media coverage, for instance.

Indeed Professor Paula Jarzabkowski notes: “durability may be considered a ‘code-of-practice’ or even ‘best practice’, being sedimented rules and resources that govern how to act”. Those who wish to license PR practitioners, establish a rigid body of knowledge and define the discipline in a particular way reflect this thinking as much as innovation laggards.

The tension between uncertainty and flexibility on the one hand, and predictability and consistency on the other, provides a positive force for sustainable professional development .

An efficient and effective continuous-improvement approach seeks to deliver long-term value from the investment of time and money in practice-related learning experiences.

Sustainable professional development (SPD) recognises the need for individuals, teams and organisations to pursue change and stability as simultaneous experiences.

Formalising a distinctive framework of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviours (KSABs) leads to efficiency and shared understanding of working processes and practices for both organisations and professions. Yet, adaptation and innovation are necessary to respond to changing situations, achieve competitive advantages and add entrepreneurial value.

Rather than continuing the debate that contrasts academic and professional qualifications with learning ‘on the job’, establishing an sustainable professional development culture within the PR occupation would allow for a full range of learning experiences – and learning styles – to realise practitioner potential, improve practice, and enhance career development.

Opportunities to learn come in many forms, which can be individual or collaborative.

The most powerful motivation to learn is being curious and interested in gaining new knowledge or skills, or when learning is spontaneous and exploratory. One problem with formal CPD schemes is that whilst external incentives or reinforcements can be useful for compliance or recognition, they may be less effective in ensuring sustainable development.

An SPD approach is evident in recent work to establish a global capability framework for public relations/corporate communications. Where skills and competencies focus on what someone is able to do now, capabilities look at the opportunities necessary to enable people to function to the best of their abilities.

Practically, sustainable professional development involves connecting existing competencies to evolving knowledge, skills and abilities through effective ways of learning, what the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky called scaffolding. It also encourages individuals to set objectives and evaluate personal learning outcomes, with a focus on a range of possible methods and measures of return on investment.

It is helpful to encourage four approaches to learning within any professional development framework: theory and scholarship (structured learning), problem solving (experiential learning), critical thinking and reflective practice.

Critical thinking is recognised as a vital analytical process that improves decision-making, reasoned and ethical judgements, and evaluation of potential outcomes. It also stimulates creativity, innovation and continuous improvement. Reflective practice is adopted in a number of professions including medicine, teaching and healthcare. It involves an ongoing process of reviewing how thought processes affect actions in order to explore, explain and improve our work. As such, it supports work-based, experiential learning through application of structured techniques.

We need to encourage learning of critical thinking and reflective practice techniques among students and practitioners. This is something that the new CIPR professional qualifications have integrated into the syllabus and assessments, generating really positive feedback since their launch.

There are other things that can be done to normalise professional development as a habit of all PR practitioners.

• We could make it easier for practitioners to access and learn from books and journal papers – particularly when time is a limiting factor on engagement with professional development.
• Industry publications could do more to demonstrate how theory and academic research informs, explains and improves practice – by showing how to apply useful concepts and tools. This is something that I have sought to do with a set of practical appendices in The Public Relations Strategic Toolkit book. They could also profile and interview academics and authors.
• We could do much more to celebrate the value of scholarship and recognise academic thought-leaders as well as qualified practitioners, rather than those who claim expertise by dint of experience or loudness of their voices.

At the same time, we need to ensure academics, educators, and those who commit to studying for University and vocational qualifications, can apply – and critique – the body of knowledge that has developed within public relations scholarship over the past century, and is continuing to develop in response to technological, societal and practice changes. Those who undertake research, and share knowledge, need to show how insight is developed directly from, and within, practice in a robust way.

Finally, we should encourage practitioners to have an open mind about the benefits of academic study. Academic institutions could offer more open sessions and practitioners could be prepared to listen and learn from graduates instead of criticising them for their academic knowledge.