It’s the great taboo: working in a creative business isn’t always creative. You may have chosen a career in public relations after being seduced by the idea that it’s glamorous and obviously highly creative. The gloss can wear off after years of working long hours in what is often a very stressful, process-driven environment. ‘I need it yesterday’ deadlines, demanding clients, being constantly on call (thanks, Blackberry!) and constant pressure on budgets can eventually contribute to low morale, creative drought, and dwindling performance and productivity.

There are many reasons why PR professionals lose their early passion for the business. When someone starts a career in PR they are very hands on, and always on the phone pitching to journalists. The danger point is when you move up through the ranks and become a manager, with responsibility for other people and a budget, and start wondering why you are in PR when you’re not actually doing much, well, PR.

Burn-out is another problem in such a fast-paced industry, particularly since technology now means we are on-call 24/7. It can feel like our employers own us, even at the weekends. The clearly-defined strata of job titles in most PR agencies may also contribute to feeling less than positive about work. People tend to be promoted because they’re great at their old job, not necessarily because they’re going to be great at the next one, and may not have all the support they need to excel out of their comfort zone.

Many PR bosses now realise that keeping their teams happy is not just a nice-to-have: it’s bottom-line critical. reducing the enormous costs of recruiting, training and settling in new people is a sound business reason for investing time and money in making sure employees are fulfilled and motivated. The PR industry has a notoriously high level of staff churn – many employers and employees assume that ‘people in PR move on every 18 months or so’ – but does this have to be the case?

In one of my previous incarnations as a life coach for the PR industry, I ran workshops to help PR professionals fall back in love with their job.  I used a variety of techniques and exercises to help knackered, disillusioned PR professionals to get their sparkle back. These included:

• Remind yourself what why you went into the business in the first place. Write a list of the things you really love about the job, rather than indulging in moaning.
• Articulate what your current job would look like if it was ideal in every respect, then make an action plan to identify the baby steps you can take now to get closer to that ideal. Take back your control.
• Check your personal values are the same as the company you work for. If the things that really matter to you and the things that really matter to your employers don’t overlap, it’s probably time to find somewhere where you can be more authentically yourself and really flourish in your career. 
• If you feel you want to do something more worthy, you may be able to introduce a new element to your working life that is more closely aligned with your own values, such as adding some pro bono work for charities.

When valued employees have lost their mojo, employers can get them back onside by using the language of PR: repositioning or reinventing people in terms of the division they work for, their clients, their role, or the way they work. Flexibility counts for a lot. Sabbaticals can offer an opportunity to stand back and reflect away from the intensity of the workplace, and job swaps with other offices within the same organisation can give people some perspective on what they love about working for the company.

If you find yourself moaning about the job more than celebrating it, it may be time for a careful think about whether you are in the right business. If you want to stay in PR but need a bit of a boost, there are plenty of things that you can do to put the passion back. Just remember that no-one else can take responsibility for your experience of your own job.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2011 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Public relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.