Author: Penny

As the title of my blog suggests, I am a freelance PR working mainly in the public and voluntary sectors, on projects from small scale copywriting to big social marketing projects. In my time I've worked for government departments, the BBC and a range of other organisations of various stages of dysfunctionality. Now I'm trying to get to grips with the world of the micro-business and facing up to the recession with a fair bit of trepidation.

The language of welfare

I cheered  this morning when I read on  Twitter a plea for  a “nuanced debate about benefits, which doesn’t assume polar split between the hardworking & benefit scroungers.”  Yes, please, but it feels like a long way off.

Much of the debate about cuts  has seemed to concentrate on cases at the further extremes.    The debate about housing benefit  focused on the argument that it’s not fair for hard-working taxpayers (HWTs) to subsidise workshy benefit-dependents living in expensive houses in central London, so benefits must be capped.  Jeremy Hunt raised the spectre of large families with lots of children being supported by HWTs when changes to child benefit were being discussed.

The biggest HWT issue of all is benefit given to the long-term unemployed – too easily demonised as a workshy mass who can’t be bothered to work (but want money for fags and booze and have lots of kids).

The World at One’s package on the welfare reforms proposed today was illustrated with an interview with two women from the Glasgow district of Easterhouse, where Ian Duncan Smith was first converted to the cause of welfare reform.  Neither of them had worked in a decade, one had spent the past ten years taking drugs.  Both felt that threats to take their benefits away were disgraceful and that, for different reasons,  they couldn’t be expected to work.  However liberally-minded you are  it’s  hard to argue that a system which allows this is a good one – although the question of exactly what kind of work they might actually be able to do inevitably springs to mind.

The Glaswegian duo though, shouldn’t be used to represent everyone who needs the support of benefits.  As it happens, housing benefit is far more likely to be paid to HWTs to help out with high living costs caused by a shortage of affordable housing than to feckless families in penthouses in Kensington.   The long-term unemployed haven’t  all made a lifestyle choice to be on benefits – many are qualified, highly motivated, clever people,  desperate to work in an economy where there are no jobs and little in the way of accessible, affordable childcare.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that the welfare system doesn’t need to be reformed.  Drawing battle lines between the “undeserving poor” and the rest of us, though,  just  generates heat without light.   Labelling those who accept benefits as scroungers; pleading that it’s “not fair” to pay for services we ourselves don’t need, undermines support for the whole system and the social good it generates for everyone.   Time, I think, to claim back the notion of “fairness” before the welfare state is dismantled around us.

The value of loyalty in hard times

Flickr:LucyFrench123

I’ve been a member of my gym for five years, go three times a week (honestly)   and have a personal trainer – I’m a good customer, paying top whack every month.  And I’m starting to feel like a  mug.   As the Christmas Party/ New Year’s resolution season  approaches all gyms, mine included, are bending over backwards to think up  membership offers to tempt the lardy of arse over the threshold.  As a new member I could join my gym for half of what I’m currently paying.

At no point during the last five years has my gym expended a moment’s thought on  how to keep me  handing over my £60 every month. There are no discounts, cut price offers, special access to trainers.  No reasons to make me feel that they value my custom and want to hang on to it. The  occasional promotion offering  a bit off my membership if I can entice a friend to join  just makes me feel like an unpaid member of their sales force on work experience.

The  basic  business model seems to be based on a really fast churn of members as people get fired up to get fit, start exercising, lose enthusiasm and leave . Everything is focused on getting new recruits wobbling through the doors.  It seems to be much less important to hold on to members once they’ve been hooked – which seems odd, given the relative difficulty of attracting new members compared with the advantages of retaining the ones you’ve got.    It’s not just LA Fitness that’s missing a trick.  As far as I can see there are no loyalty schemes currently being offered by any of the big gym chains to try to keep their members sweet.  Fitness First seem to have tried something a while ago which didn’t last – at least if it did I can’t find a reference to it.  They do  have a loyalty scheme aimed at their personal trainers, but nothing for us, the sweaty and slightly breathless customers who  keep them in business.

My own inertia shows why they don’t  bother – they don’t need to.  Why cut into the profit to be earned from a customer who  shows no sign of going elsewhere?  But times are getting harder and people don’t have money to chuck around unthinkingly anymore.  If they can’t be loyal to me,  I won’t  be loyal to them either.  If they won’t do me a deal on membership  then I’ll take my abs and glutes somewhere cheaper, which would be a shame because I really like the gym.

How do you prove you’re resilient? Work in the public sector

A depressing entry in the Guardian’s cutsblog suggests that the image of public sector workers as plodding, risk-averse jobsworths will count against them when it comes to taking some of the  2 million jobs that the private sector is poised to deliver any day now.

Enough recruitment consultants have been quoted in PR Week saying that public sector-ites will be at a disadvantage in the jobs market to have spooked me into attending a CIPR/VMA event looking at how hard it might be to move from public to private sector.   Inevitably the hardest thing to prove when you’ve worked in the public sector is that you have the commercial acumen to make it in private business.  Otherwise, it seems  the skills that employers are looking for are, encouragingly, the ones that you develop as a means of survival in the public sector –  resilience,  managing change, leading teams, influencing stakeholders,  a willingness to push back against difficult managers (Lord, have I got some stories to tell…)

Transferable communications skills

Having worked in comms in both sectors, I’d say that the skills you need to succeed are pretty much the same for either.  My starter list would include  a continuous focus on the audience, a sound understanding of the market you’re working in,  imagination, flexibility, tenacity, a sharp eye for managing budgets and people, an understanding of strategy (and how it differs from tactics),  a willingness to get stuck into delivery (and the practical know-how), a healthy respect for deadlines,  the political nous to navigate  layers of management, good writing skills and an eye for detail.  I see no reason why having the skills to work in one should somehow bar you from working in the other.

The importance of social networks

I was struck by how few people at the event said they felt confident  using social media as part of their job-hunting armoury.  Sadly, opting out isn’t an option.  Research suggests that 100% of recruitment consultants use LinkedIn as a tool to identify (and weed out) candidates for posts, and that the size of your network is important.  Something like 85% of them use Twitter for the same reason.  Not having an online presence suggests that you haven’t updated your skills in a decade and aren’t really playing the game – not having a LinkedIn account now is like not having an email address was ten years ago.

Barbara Gibson – our social media guru – recorded this  on her phone at the event I went to, demonstrating a neat way of gathering content for a blog or website at the same time as cementing a link with a potential contact – wouldn’t you be flattered if she asked to interview you?  And wouldn’t you put the link on your site too and link back to her?  Genius!

The point of opposition

During the Labour leadership election Richard and I talked a lot about what exactly it was that we were voting for (I know, I know, but we can’t afford to go out much).  Were we looking for the next Prime Minister – polished enough to win the confidence of media barons and banks,  someone to triumph in the 2015 leaders’ debates? Or were we looking for a Leader of the Opposition, who was focused on giving the government a good kicking every day for the next five years?  In the end I opted for the latter – I voted for Ed Balls – believing that a period of calm  reflection and sweet  reasonableness was a luxury that neither the party nor the country could  afford.

The deafening silence from the Labour leadership since the CSR (and the truly shocking outcome of the Tower Hamlets’ mayoral election); the lack of  an alternative economic plan and the seeming inability to mobilise against  the government’s programme fill me with real despair.  The job of pointing out the dangers of what’s being proposed seems to be being left  to  the IFS,  Nobel Economics Laureates and blogs.  The flood of communication from the Labour Party during the leadership campaign on email and Twitter seems to have dried up completely – they’re not even preaching to the converted at the moment.

One of the problems for any Opposition is that the big, dumb, easily-graspable lines the government is peddling: “This is fair.  It’s all Labour’s fault.  The education budget has been protected.  We’re all in this together” are so much easier  to fit into a headline than the nuanced analysis of the small print that you need to put the opposite view.    The Labour party needs to find ways to counter the belief that this is all unavoidable and it needs to find ways of getting a clear message out, fast.

I assume that the strategy is to build up a plan the party can unite behind and argue for in the long-term.  And I can see the value of not giving in to knee-jerk opposition for the sake of it.  The problem is that – as the man said –  a lie can be half way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.  The longer the “this is all Labour’s fault” line is out there unopposed, the harder it’s going to be to avoid the blame for what’s  coming next.

I can stand the despair, it’s the hope

Just as I’d given up on the piece of work that had looked so promising back in September, it comes back to haunt me.  They still want to work with us (and so they should, we’re great) they just need to sort out the incumbent agency and re-draw the spec.  But they LOVE the proposal so could we just bear with them until, maybe, November?  So the waiting continues.  And while I’d love to affect a blithe indifference, I  really, really can’t.

So how was the CSR for you?

Spent the day feeling maternal: filling hot water bottles and heating milk for my sick son while listening to the carnage of the Comprehensive Spending Review on the radio.  Noticed too late that the cats had caught a  squirrel and ripped it to shreds, leaving bits of tail scattered all over the garden.  Had it been a scene in a film the director would have cut it for being far too obvious…

Stra’tegy (n) art of war: art of planning

Every so often I agree with something  in the Daily Telegraph.  It happened again today.  I had to mark it somehow.

In the wake of a strategic defence review  which has given us new aircraft carriers but no aircraft to launch from them, Philip Johnston has identified a lack of capacity to think strategically as a major failing of British government.   The Public Admin Select Committee has come to the same conclusion: “We have all but lost the capacity to think strategically,” it said yesterday. “We have simply fallen out of the habit, and have lost the culture of strategy making.”

Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin was on the Today programme yesterday making the same point “We seem to be operating under the imperative of deficit reduction, there’s very little in what is being done now that really reflects deep and sustained analysis of what kind of country we want to be in ten or twenty years time. “

Hang on a minute while I climb on my high horse…

I had to smile when Jenkin said that a strategy “isn’t a document the government publishes and then sticks on a shelf” – this is, of course,  exactly what a strategy is in many  departments.  When I was there, there was an almost mystical belief that the  act of publishing a strategy  absolved everyone from the burden of delivering it.  I agreed with much of what Jenkin had to say, though – and have said quite a lot of it here in the past.  Dangerous short-termism?  Check.   Cuts taking precedence over serious policy review?  Why, yes.  Lack of effective cross-departmental working in government? Yup,  although the structures of government make that hard and things are getting better.

Jenkin was concerned that the strategic thinking module in the civil service training programme has been shrunk to one week.  I’d argue that that hardly matters if we continue to  cut the service to the bone  – more short-term thinking.  Oh, and one way of getting people to think strategically is to fund higher education  so that  subjects which teach people how to think  (not just  how to make money) survive.  We need far more historians and Classicists in government!  At least one of the Telegraph’s commenters seems to agree – almost.  “What’s lacking in modern Britain IMHO is a professional, well-trained and remunerated civil service formulating long-term options” he said, adding  ” and selling them to the government of the day” .  Well, it is the  Telegraph.

Middle class spread

 

The Daily Mail’s usually pitch-perfect sense of what its audience wants to hear hit a bum note a while ago with an article about   middle class workers who used to earn £80k+ and are now wondering where the next set of school fees is going to come from.  The Guardian did the same thing a few weeks earlier with a similar piece looking at couples wondering how they can manage the child care and pay the au pair as they look forward to a future without a decent pension.  In both cases the comment threads were full of people pointing out that reality for most people doesn’t  involve school fees, multiple foreign holidays or domestic help; that no-one has a good pension these days and that our correspondents should just get over themselves.

If you read the papers regularly you could be forgiven for thinking that “middle class” in this county covers people on incomes between about £30,000 and, say £100,000.  It’s no doubt coloured by journalists – who tend to be  well paid – assuming that they represent the hard-working norm.  For the record, the Office for National Statistics reckons that median pay for a man in 2009 was a smidge over £25k; for a woman, a whisker above £22k. Despite what the Daily Mail says, the real middle class is not going to worry about having a cap of £50k put on its pension contributions.

Who the middle classes are – and what they earn – is now a matter of serious debate , as the government changes child benefit, university tuition fees and pensions  (I note that  outrage about cuts to housing benefit has been  more muted, presumably because  lots of journalists get child benefit while  few need help with the rent).   It’s making me wonder, again, about how we define class in this country (why it matters – if it does – is another post entirely).  Is it based on earnings and does it change as disposable income waxes and wanes?

As I sail, seemingly unstoppably, towards the ranks of the new poor (Christmas may be coming, but this goose ain’t getting fat), do I still count as middle class because of my degree, the careers I’ve pursued, the food I eat and the fact that I don’t hold my knife like a pencil to eat it?  Or am I now one of the undeserving poor?  Should I have known  this was going to happen before I so recklessly had my children?  Should I be worried that  Jeremy Hunt might try to re-possess them?

Communication isn’t the same as spin

Pop quiz: what do these   stories have in common?

The answer is, of course, they are united by rushed policy-making, an airy attitude to making announcements without expecting to be questioned about the details, and  spectacularly bad communications.

Ironically,the thing I like about this government  ( the only one) is its sense of urgency and its refusal to accept that there are any sacred cows that can’t be slaughtered.  I wish the last lot had been so bold.  But change on this scale needs to be based on sound evidence and detailed policy work, else it has a tendency to blow up in your face; and if you can’t explain what you’re trying to do, you can’t build the support you need to get it done.

The comms thing really pains me: poor briefing, confused messages, over-promising what cannot be delivered, insensitivity to the needs of important stakeholders,  confusion about key areas of policy.  They  need  good communications support and the need will get more acute as policy starts to be implemented.  Some optimists think that they are going to start realising this quite soon.  Regular readers will know, however,  that I am not  by nature a glass half full kind of a girl.  Government communication is firmly linked to spin and smears (Cameron said it again in his  leader’s speech yesterday).  The notions of PR, lobbying and campaigning are such an anathema to Ministers that they are effectively forbidding people to do it (even though an estimated 15% of new Tory MPs have a background in lobbying).  CIPR are trying to raise the issue of the value of public sector comms, but I doubt that will be enough.  They need comms help – how do we convince them?

Update:  I’ve just re-read this.  It worries me that it looks as though I think comms can or should be used as a cover for bad policy. It can’t and shouldn’t. My point is that if the government has a coherent strategy  that is driving what’s being done,  they have no chance of letting us know what it might be without a marked improvement in their comms.  The fact that it looks increasingly  as though no such coherence exists is worrying on many levels…

The brothers, a drama in several acts

The press’s  obsession with the psychodrama of Ed vs David Miliband is becoming completely ridiculous.  Ed’s speech yesterday was reported through the prism of how it might affect David; the news today is still about how David might feel about being beaten  by his little brother and the psychological damage each might have inflicted on the other.  At time of writing this, MiliD hasn’t announced whether or not he’s staying on in front line politics.  I assume he’s not, just to avoid  five years of fending off stories about fraternal rivalry, feuding  and factionalism led by the pop-psychologists of Fleet Street and the BBC.

I suggest this as a possible text for his statement this afternoon, and then a long holiday.