PR, marcomms, recruitment and all the bits in between

Professional ‘casual’ image

We all remember the days when we would see people on their way to work, suited and booted, shoes polished, tie straightened. But times are changing and the new ‘smart casual’ policy is slowly creeping into our daily working lives.

 

Gone are the high-powered daily suits and shoulder pads and here are the ‘smart jeans’ and fashionable work attire. According to research by training company the Aziz Corporation, only one in four office workers – 24% - is required to wear a suit on a daily basis, with the rest able to indulge in smart casual dress codes, leaving suits in the cupboard for company meetings.

 

However, as great as this may seem the general relaxed feeling has not been met well by everyone. Two thirds of us disagree with the idea and believe that work remains a place where attitude and appearance should remain professional at all times.

 

“Most employees take their professional image at work very seriously and will dress smartly by choice” says Khalid Aziz, the head of Aziz Corperation. With this in mind let’s hope that those without their suits on continue to take their work seriously.

Too much ‘Junk Sleep’?

Its no longer just ‘Junk Food’ affecting our work- enter ‘Junk Sleep’. For a long time now those of us in work have been advised to be healthy and eat well. It is recommended we do regular exercise and avoid junk food, some of which we do and some we’re just too busy for!

 

However, there is now another form of ‘junk’ to add to the ever growing list; Junk Sleep. According to the manufacturers of nocturnal cramp treatment, Crampex, those of us not getting enough sleep are costing the economy millions of pounds a year.

 

One fifth of us regularly get less then five hours sleep a night resulting in time off work due to exhaustion. With only five hours sleep considered bad sleep, or ‘junk sleep’ it is obviously important for us all to concentrate on getting more healthy sleep. Does that mean we get to go home early tonight? 

ROWE

Nine to five is out of date, don’t you know. ROWE – Results Only Work Environment – is quickly catching on in the USA. Instead of working your fixed hours at your desk, you can choose when and where you write those reports, meaning you can fit gym sessions and the school runs in around your work. HR consultant Cali Ressler is one of the creators of the concept and says we’re stuck in a 1930s mindset and that the 40 hour working week is now thought to be necessary for competency, efficiency and effectiveness, which was not its original intention. Fellow creator Jody Thompson says “If you can get results in a 20 hour week, fine. If you do your best work at the beach, fine.” Electronics retailer Best Buy has implemented the system and productivity has gone up 41% and staff turnover has been reduced by a massive 90%. It all sounds like a good idea to us, although with the invention of Facebook we know that self motivation proves difficult for many of us Britons, so maybe we should stick with the office. Besides, who would want to miss out on the water cooler gossip?

Get fit at work

You may not think that it’s any of your boss’s business how often you go to the gym, but the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has said that there can be many benefits for employers who promote exercise to their employees. As well as being beneficial for staff’s health by improving their fitness and helping to prevent many conditions like heart disease and diabetes, Nice’s public health director says that “a healthy workforce can result in financial benefits…including increased productivity, less sickness absence and greater staff retention.” So you may find yourself taking the stairs instead of the lift in the near future.

Job hurdles

We may think it’s scandalous that some Britons are denied jobs on the basis of their race, gender, religion or age, but just be glad you don’t live in Spain. Medical experts are trying to reduce the number of reasons why candidates can be declined from jobs with the Civil Guard. Current ones include having a high pitched voice, diabetes, a sexually transmitted disease, one testicle or a stutter. Spanish discrimination laws obviously still have a way to go.

Truble speling?

Research commissioned by the Spelling Society has revealed that British adults aren’t too good at spelling. 54% spelt “embarrassed” incorrectly, 46% couldn’t spell “liaison” and 43% had trouble spelling “millennium”. 1000 people were asked to spell 10 words, and every word was misspelled by someone, with the younger generation less confident than their older peers. The Society is campaigning for a simplification of spelling, saying that we are “still using 16^th-century spelling for a 21^st-century language”. Thank God for spell check…although even that didn’t work for Lee from the Apprentice.

Picking on the wrong person

PR Week carried a feature last month on the dangers to employers of letting clients ‘harass’ their staff (it all seemed to be about male to female harassment, inferring that it didn’t happen the other way around, or are we just being naive?). As anyone who has read any form of legal media will be well aware, complacency in this area can lead to rather unpleasant financial shocks. Although perhaps not quite as momentous as the shock that finance company, F&C Asset Management, is facing. The firm is currently contemplating a £19 million bill for allegedly driving the head of its in-house legal team out of her job. Failing to spot the lack of wisdom in taking on a top lawyer, who had been described as a ‘whirling dervish’ by her peers, the firm apparently made Gill Switalski’s life more than a little difficult over an 18 month period by constantly querying her expenses and working methods, asking for her mother’s death certificate when she cancelled a business trip after the bereavement and asking her to come into the office when she was still connected up to a drip after a serious operation. If the case succeeds it will swamp the previous record for a gender discrimination case - a paltry £6.5 million won by a bond trader at Morgan Stanley. So do be careful out there.

Market trends

Our latest analysis of new assignments coming onto the market has highlighted a definite dip in the in-house sector, with as many as 40% less roles now available than at this time last year. So is this the beginning of the long-promised collapse which will have us all living in tents and surviving on out-of date Pot Noodles by the end of the year? Well perhaps not. Instead this phenomenon seems to be part of a ‘correction’ to the spike in demand we saw from in-house departments in the first half of 2007. At the time the accepted wisdom was that PR should be pulled in-house wherever possible so that costs could be kept under tight control and ROI monitored more closely. Ironically the nervousness engendered by our old friend the credit crunch has actually caused the opposite effect. Many organisations now take the view that headcounts should be kept down to a minimum and PR support is best farmed out to an agency where it can be turned up or down depending on the circumstances of the market. So not so much a downturn as a u-turn. Watch this space for the next big thing in in-house strategy.

….and the disappearing job

Although some commentators have highlighted Boris Johnson’s victory in the London electoral race as a masterpiece of media management (mainly by getting him to keep as quiet as possible during the campaign) it seems that the capital’s new mayor will not be showing much gratitude to the marcomms profession in his new role. Although he has appointed former BBC correspondent (and very short-term Fleishmann-Hillard consultant) Guto Harri, as his new director of communications, he is also planning to axe up to a fifth of marketing and PR jobs within the GLA. Biting the hand that feeds perhaps?

 

 

The most difficult job

We all have different ideas about what would be the most difficult job, but according to The Times, it is currently held by a certain Katharine Witty. Those of you who spent the early months of the year asleep may have missed the (hopefully) final instalment in the ‘who killed Diana?’ saga, where at the bargain price of £7 million worth of tax payers money we got to find out that it was an accident after all (bargain). Featuring prominently in the background of these events was said Ms Witty who is Mohammed Al Fayed’s official spokesperson. Given the nature of some of Mr Al Fayed’s public pronouncements (suggesting the Duke of Edinburgh was a closet Nazi and related to Frankenstein, for example), it’s perhaps not surprising that Max Clifford described the role as ‘challenging, very difficult’ and as The Times puts out, he is a man who should know as he represents Kerry Katona. A graduate of well-known hot house, St Paul’s school and Oxford, Ms Witty cut her teeth in local newspapers before moving to the BBC and then Sky as royal correspondent. Sounds like an excellent CV and when she’s ready to move on we’d be  more than pleased to hear from her.