Staff training for PR and marketing shops
Ongoing employee development gets a polite nod — if that — at most small to mid-sized PR agencies. And that’s a shame, since it’s one of the highest ROI activities agency owners can engage in, along with systemic business development.
While I haven’t worked at endless agencies in my career, a couple of them have been deeply committed to employee development. Additionally, I did a stint at Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc., a company generally regarded in the construction industry as the leader in terms of employee development. All of which is a long-winded way of saying: I’ve got opinions.
Good training programs follow career arcs. If the first time employees encounter your training is when they’ve been there a few years or gotten promoted into management, then it’s not a good program. Better to have less to offer at each level and something at every level than to aggregate all the training into launchpad stuff like courses for new account execs, supervision 101, etc.
Employees on a track to management (or more specifically, on a track to positions with significant P/L authority) should be trained together no matter how many offices you have to fly them in from. Can’t fit ‘em all into a big hotel meeting room? Then break ‘em into multiple groups but the big idea is to get all these people together to meet and exchange experiences. They’ll learn, but they’ll also forge personal friendships and work relationships that will help the company. If you have an account coordinator making a decision, it’s unlikely to have a huge impact on the company - but a newly minted VP? You want him/her to know lots of other people in the organization so ideas and experiences can be shared.
Friend and uber-flack Peter Shankman (
