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Friday, April 03, 2009

IABC Chair Barb Gibson’s stand against New Zealand PR cuts is not misguided

Barb Gibson, the 2008-09 chair of IABC, sent a letter to Tony Ryall, New Zealand’s State Services Minister, seeking reconsideration of an order to all department heads to reduce the number PR staff. Neville covered the issue on Thursday’s FIR.

Among the responses to Barb’s blog post on the issue is a comment from Graeme Purches, the president elect of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand. Purches argues that Barb’s effort to engage the IABC membership in a campaign to reinforce her message—that PR isn’t about spin but rather about ensuring organizations achieve their goals—is misguided. “The reality is that many of the jobs being lost were positions created by the former government to undertake social marketing, and spread that government’s social agenda message, in a long lead up to what was always going to be a difficult election,” Purches writes.

If this is true, I have no problem with the elimination of positions that should never have been staffed to begin with. But there’s something amiss with Purches’s argument. If, indeed, this were a matter of correcting inappropriate hires, wouldn’t the order from State Services target those specific hires?

It does not. According to State Service’s own press release (crafted, no doubt, by one of its PR staff):

The cap on the size of core government administration has been set at 38,859 full time equivalent (FTE) staff positions.  The cap is based on the number of FTE staff in Public Service departments and selected Crown entities plus unfilled vacancies as at 31 December 2008.  It is also expected that the numbers of communications and public relations staff will be reduced.

A newspaper article is more specific: “The Government said 321 communications or public relations advisers were employed in government departments.
State Services Minister Tony Ryall has told all departmental chief executives to reduce the number of public relations staff, although he has not given a target.”

Surely not every New Zealand government department employed communicators specifically to undertake social marketing and spread the government’s social agenda message. If every department is required to reduce PR staff, wouldn’t that mean departments with a single communicator would be left with none? That departments already stretched to the bone in an effort to create effective lines of communication between government and constituents will be rendered ineffective?

I’m open to evidence that an across-the-board reduction of communication staff in every department that employs them will somehow selectively slice those communicators hired for purposes for which taxpayers should not be responsible. Until then, I’m standing with Barb and her exercise of IABC advocacy. The wanton eradication of communication jobs could produce worse interactions between government and its stakeholders, not better. And in the absence of such evidence, I would hope Mr. Purches does a better job of standing up for his constituents once he becomes president than making excuses for a new government he appears to favor. (That’s how it looks. I’m just sayin’.)

I’ve long believed that when times are tough, organizations (including governments) need to communicate more, not less. If the goal is simple reduction of staff costs, then by all means, reduce communication staff, Minister Ryall. But do it when times are good and the need for communication is reduced. Now is the time to up your game.

As Barb suggests, the more of us who speak up, the more likely we are to be heard in the halls of New Zealand’s government.

As for Barb Gibson, her courageous stand has made me prouder than ever to be a member of IABC.