Career Development - Apr08

Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours

Involving your employees more for better career development results

Singapore's PR scene has developed significantly over the past eight years, and with it, career opportunities in the sector. The candidates graduating from our various academic institutions are of high calibre and are demonstrating strong potential for growth. Correspondingly, most work place environments, agencies or in-house, understand the need for career development as part of talent retention and to maintain a cohesive team; though having said that, the employees themselves have responsibility in part to their own career development. 

Good PR practitioners must have some fundamentals as part of their DNA. Firstly, a thirst for knowledge and a curiosity to learn, you must soak up information like a sponge. However, the ability to interpret this information and develop insights is crucial; so that these insights can be developed into ideas. The other fundamental is a solid grasp of language skills - Singapore as a global hub demands our PR practitioners to have strong written and verbal communications skills and must be strong in one key language at least.

Employers - whether agency or ‘client' - should offer regular appraisals and this should be then supported by development plans and KPIs. KPIs are important so that employees have a clear understanding of what is expected of them, what the business objectives they are supporting, as well as a development plan so that they know where they need to improve. Taken one step further, the development plan should outline what will be done to help address the areas for improvement. These can include in-house or external training or even initiatives that the employee themselves will undertake.

Employers too should attempt to expose new practitioners to a variety of experiences; within agencies, this also means exposure to other practices and specialist areas. This is often hard because if an employee is doing a great job, management loath to move him or her to another account for fear of upsetting the current client. This is a balancing act which employers should plan for, so that in the early stages of employees' career they can achieve a broad base of experiences. And as they move up in their career, they can make informed decisions about areas they wish to specialise in.

On the other hand, career development planning also requires the commitment of the employee to ‘stick with it' - to have some loyalty to the company that is helping to develop and groom them. Probably the number one issue I see in Singapore is staff churn. Yes, we have a buoyant PR industry and probably there are not enough people to go around. However, employers do look at resumes and rapid change or short duration job bursts are noted (I do believe this holds truth across industries). Remember too, for the agency, the management is mindful of clients' pet peeve of staff churn on their accounts.

This means that career development also requires the employee to have a plan. I do not mean to say it has to be of encyclopedic proportions, but rather a map that outlines key markers that shape want we want to achieve, and then take steps to achieve them with a line of sight for the next five years. Employees should try and incorporate them into their day-to-day plans at work. If the employee has an open and strong relationship with their employer they can even consider sharing their plans with the employer. Risky you say - hopefully not if you have a relationship based on trust. 

Many years ago an employee shared his plan with me. He wanted to leave in three years to study law. At that point, we actually did have legal clients within the agency, so naturally then he was a perfect choice to work on these accounts. His commitment to his accounts and contributions actually improved dramatically as a result of this. If you are wondering what happened to him, well, he actually realised he did not fancy law much after all and changed his career plans. He is still to this day working at a PR agency.

Michael Rose

CEO

MRA Communications