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CAN'T FIND SOMETHING? |
Challenge extended To keep your employees, keep them happy and hungry 
By Jan-Christian Sorensen You've got the best PR professionals in the game working at your company. Now how do you keep them? Adopting successful strategies for hiring and retaining staff and avoiding turnover isn't as simple as offering salary incentives, perks or extracurricular activities. It's about providing benefits that are often much less tangible. Steve Campbell, president of Vancouver-based Campbell & Company Strategies Inc., says that while it's up to his employees to be creative, effective communicators honed in the fine art of persuasion, it's just as important for the boss to remember that even the best PR people often have the shortest of attention spans. They crave constant challenge by a variety of exciting projects. "Because PR people are very interested in current events, business issues, interesting people and other businesses, they can get bored very easily doing the same work every day," Campbell says. "If they don't get a continuing surge of new or interesting assignments, they will leave the organization in order to find work that is more fulfilling. Companies need to recognize the PR person's need for challenge and find new assignments to keep [him or her] engaged in the business." Firms overlooking this requirement do so at their own peril, warns Campbell: when PR people get bored and jump ship, "you lose all the knowledge" they "accumulated during their time with you, and you'll have to start from scratch every couple of years." Establishing the right type of culture within the office has helped turn Karyo Edelman into one of Vancouver's largest PR firms, with 35 full-time staff members. "Our turnover is relatively low, and I think that's because we spend a lot of time focused on making this a great place to work for the people who are here," says Paul Welsh, general manager of Karyo Edelman with Patti Schom-Moffatt, who, in 1983, founded Karyo Communications, which was acquired by Edelman Canada in 2007. For proof of that return-on-loyalty policy, look no further than Welsh himself, who has been with the firm for 15 years. "We've always been driven by one thing: to create the type of company that we would want to work [at] if we were employees, so that means creating a place where people are able to share their ideas [and] concerns and feel ... they are part of what's going on here; they're not just cogs in the machine - and I think we've been successful." While keeping both your employees and your clients satisfied can seem like a tightrope act, it's a win-win: firms that manage the former have an easier time achieving the latter. "Finding the right people is the magic bullet," says Welsh. "That's what we're all striving to do, day in and day out, and sometimes you just get it wrong. It's like (former Red Sox slugger) Ted Williams. He missed six out of 10 times, and he's the greatest hitter who every played the game of baseball. I like to think our average is a little bit better than that." George Affleck, president and CEO of Curve Communications Group Ltd., advises PR and communications firms that flexibility can help them retain staff. Affleck, who founded Curve in 2000, maintains a strictly "hands-off" policy in his office, treating each employee as more of an independent contractor. That perfectly suits a communications expert like Curve's Kerry Slater, who returned from maternity leave with a more baby-centric schedule in her sights. Affleck was only too happy to comply: "With the baby, Kerry wants to be able to start work at 10 a.m. on some days or miss some afternoons, and she asked me if it was going to be a problem, and I said, 'Absolutely not.' She's been with me for six years, and I don't want to lose her or that experience, so I stay wide open to that kind of stuff. The average age of my staff is 28 or 29 years old, so I think it really is required [for management] to be flexible in this business." At 44, Affleck comes by his more youthful, laissez-faire philosophy honestly. Nonetheless, he holds his employees to an extremely high set of standards: "It's more of a collegial atmosphere, but it can be a sink-or-swim world in my office. You either blow me away or you don't survive. I make it clear at the start that I have high expectations of anybody that comes and works here. It's really up to [the employees] to drive the agenda on how they want to succeed." Affleck also advises against taking on any client simply for the sake of revenue, saying that a finely tuned PR staff can be an excellent barometer when entertaining potential clients. "I try to get all my specific pods of people involved in any new project that we take on to ensure that there's buy-in from the beginning, that there's excitement about it and that they are committed to it and can fulfil the high expectations that I have for our clients and the high expectations that I assume that our clients have for us. "For me, it's never been about money. It's all about going to work and enjoying where I work. It's like buying a good mattress or a good pair of shoes. If you're going to spend eight hours a day doing something, you better like it. "I always had a philosophy: If I go a month where I hate getting up and going to work, then it's time to quit. And I believe that I ask that of my staff all the time: 'Are you happy?' Because to me if you're not happy in your work, then it's time to move on." |
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