Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn’t make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps - Mary Kay Ash

Ten years ago most PR consultancies in Ireland didn’t have an email address, now every staff member has at least one. As someone relatively new to the profession I’m constantly reminded about how much the industry has changed by my peers. However, as someone who likes to keep track of emerging trends, if the same people think that the revolution is over then they’ve got another thing coming.

Social media in the form of online tools like wikis (definition) will radicalise how Public Relations consultancies operate internally and deal with their clients.

At the moment, email is probably the most important tool I use. When I draft a press release I’ll send it over to my client for approval, see whether they have any amendments and then wait for sign-off before issuing it to the press. When there are a couple of parties involved, things can get a little messy because you getting feedback from different people and have to put all those changes together.

That’s where wikis come in. A wiki is a webpage that anyone can edit, sort of like an online Word document. So rather than sending documents back and forth, you could create a secure page easily that you and your client could edit.

Not only would this stop the chance of you mixing up documents, but it would also give your client added value because they could check whether you have done any work on the release and make their own changes easily.

There are much wider applications for it though. In my opinion its main benefit would be to create a better working environment. The agency I work for has various teams with different people working on consumer, corporate, healthcare, public affairs and research clients. With so much going on, quite often it’s hard to gauge what capacity other people have.

Every week my team meets and we give an update on what we’re working on at the moment. Quite often things will pop up during the week, so your workload can increase drastically despite what looked like a quiet five days earlier on.

By creating an editable page where all staff could post what tasks they were working on and edit it during the week, staff members will have a much clearer picture of what people are working on and who has spare capacity.

With the work-life balance debate gaining pace, this is one simple tool that can help implement genuine change in the workplace. It is especially important for a PR agency because client crises and new business opportunities frequently pop up. Not only would such a page give a quick snapshot of what staff resources are available, but it would also prove invaluable for managing individuals.

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