A glance around any PR industry gathering underlines that the profession is hardly a shining example of diversity in action, according to Kate Nicholas, Associate Director of Communications at World Vision and formerly associate publisher/editor-in-chief of PRWeek. “In-house PR departments have a fair ethnic minority representation, and the public and third sectors tend to more closely mirror the society they work in. But 95.6% of consultancy staff say they are white and in my ten years at PRWeek I only remember meeting one disabled PR professional,” she continues.
This begs the question of how you can communicate with communities if you aren’t completely cogniscent of different cultures and ways of thinking? How can you deal with an increasingly specialist multi-channel media if you do not connect with the journalist's agenda?
Issues such as language and cultural representation are critical in terms of engaging with customers and take on a whole new resonance in the public sector. How can organisations feel confident doing business and communicating on an international basis with no understanding of the cultures they are selling to?
The PR profession has to actively promote cross-the-board diversity and may have to face up to the possibility that many highly aspirational ethnic minorities, in particular, just don’t see PR as a top notch career option.
It’s also noticeable that some types of diversity are deemed more ‘attractive’ than others. There is certainly a sound business rationale for pursuing the ‘brown pound’ currently worth around £32 billion, and the ethnic media is growing at an amazing pace – the South Asian community alone has 18 dedicated TV channels.
But what about ageism or disability? Perhaps the greatest step forward will be when diversity no longer means different things to different people.
If you would like to find out more about the business case for diversity, you can attend the CIPR’s half-day conference on 18 October. For more information, visit www.cipr.co.uk/diversityconference
