Employer Pet Peeves: An Indian PR Firm Perspective from the Corner Room
By Shael Sharma on Dec 8, 2007 in Employment, PR professionals, ethics
As a sequel to last week’s article this week I want to showcase the view from the wrong end or right end of the shotgun barrel, depending on your status in the food chain.
In a business, that is slowly maturing there is yet lots of road to travel down the professional path. The resource crunch pandemic is becoming a reality, as is the case with all other businesses; PR Firm’s too like every other enterprise are seeking to keep, up skill and attract new talent!
The above is a regular star in the everyday nightmare of a business leader in a PR Firm. The other cast include Mergers, buyout led account re-alignment. The loss of people can mean a lost account, worse loss of reputation and making it further harder to retain and hire and get general traction.
Employer pet peeves further include offer letter terrorism. This is any interesting phenomenon that involves swimming the job market and stacking offers. While everyone wants to offer their services at the best price, the mechanics involved include lies and deception. Confirming a joining date and not showing up isn’t a rare occurrence any longer.
The scarcity of trained resources has meant a further acceptance of tantrums, inferior quality of work, poor or non-existent account management and a general atmosphere where tardiness is accepted under threat of separation. Dishonesty and fudging of travel claims, using company infrastructure for personal use including dubious phone calls and other scam mongering.
This means a sense of cynicism and a lack of trust from the employer in turn that finally results in bad culture. A culture where mentoring and employee training evaporates and employers hedge people against each other in expectation of attrition and employee turnover. This leads to a chain reaction where neither can build personal trust and the first casualty is productivity followed by excellence.
The infuriating and myopic inability of account executives and managers to focus on all things financial, including expense claims of agency funds spent for client engagements, project or retainer fee claim delinquency is another big peeve. This impacts cash flows and balance sheet anarchy usually follows. The ensuing chaos can be easily avoided with regular follow ups.
While this may be a two-way street, employees need to bring up their end of the bargain just like employers do if we have to evolve as businesses that can presume integrity and legitimacy.
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On Feb 13, 2008, Xavier said:
well said Shael. a lot of what said is absolutely true. it is sometimes so crass that you find a lot of people who want more salary but less accountability for what they need to be doing or deliver. this is not a single firm issue and needs to be tackled at a co-operative level. it is affecting both sides and is one of the big reasons why it is irrational today to invest in training and other initiatives that are employee development oriented.