The poor mental health experienced by public relations professionals, and by definition, internal communication practitioners isn’t improving, and seems to be getting worse. Much of this could be driven by the behaviour of other colleagues in the organisation and a general lack of investment in the function. Until this changes, should working in PR and IC carry a ‘this profession can damage your mental health’ warning?
The poor mental health experienced by public relations professionals, and by definition, internal communication practitioners isn’t improving, and seems to be getting worse. Last month (May 2024) the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) published a joint research report revealing that on average, 91% of PR and communication practitioners have reported poor mental health in the last 12 months and those that have been diagnosed with a mental health condition has risen from one in four to a third.
If this isn’t a developing crisis for our profession, I don’t know what is, and it seems that working in a PR role puts you significantly more at risk of developing mental health issues than working in other types of jobs. It’s hardly a great advert for working in PR, and for encouraging the next generation to do the same.
What is causing this near epidemic of poor mental health amongst PR professionals? The report offers some clues, including excessive workloads, competing deadlines, overflowing email inboxes and the unclear expectations of employers about roles and what practitioners can realistically deliver.
As a veteran internal communicator I can identify with all of this, and the march of technology and our ‘always on’ society and culture has intensified all of these factors, particularly over the last decade. The report, doesn’t really fully explore these causes of stress and anxiety as drivers of poor mental health, but I think there are some glaring and obvious practical examples of them which most internal communicators like me will recognise and will have experienced in day to day working – all of which contribute to creating unreasonable workloads, stress and anxiety.
Endless requests for pointless communication activity
Internal communication which has no clear objective is pointless, but so often we are ask to create and distribute content to employees which has no clear purpose, adding to our workload.
Maybe it’s some internal stakeholders’ pet project that they want to shout about, or the endless ‘themed’ communication campaigns we are asked to undertake related to national or international activism days, many of which have questionable relevance to the organisation and the people working within it. You know the sort of thing I’m talking about here – I’d be interested to know if anyone working in internal communication in the UK ‘did some comms’ about the recent National Fish and Chip Day which took place on 6 June!
Being asked to continually churn out content to artificial deadlines which is of questionable value and which has no discernible impact is soul destroying for the professional internal communicator – cue poor mental health.
Being told what to do (and how to do it)
Employment is ultimately about control, so we expect and are conditioned to take instruction in this kind of working environment. However, being continually told ‘how to do comms’ by stakeholders with a shopping list of predetermined tactical solutions (whether these are appropriate for the circumstances and topic to be communicated or not) is an unreasonable manifestation of control and can be another huge source of frustration and stress.
It doesn’t seem to matter how experienced or qualified you are as an internal communicator, there is always some bright spark who thinks they ‘know about comms’ wanting to be directive about their communication requirements and tactics, rather than asking for advice first which would actually deliver a more impactful solution for them.
Would it ever be acceptable to tell a colleague in human resources or finance how to do their job? I don’t think so, so why is it permissible to tell a comms professional how to do theirs? Being on the receiving end of this sort of behaviour is exhausting and exasperating – cue poor mental health.
Awful (and intrusive) IT
Having to continually manage an overflowing email inbox is a familiar problem for the internal communicator, but there are now so many other ways that colleagues can access us, such as instant messaging, IT platforms such as MS Teams, and new features in email such as ‘tagging’. Our working days, carefully thought through to-do lists and ability to do meaningful work in a sustained way are often hijacked by this new ‘collaboration’ technology, with colleagues using it, to ‘jump the queue’ and get their stuff looked at first. This can be unwelcome and intrusive behaviour – cue poor mental health.
As internal communicators, we aren’t just managing our own personal email inboxes anymore, we are also managing multiple access points into the IC team across many different IT platforms and applications. And, let’s not forget to mention the dreaded ‘shared mailbox’ which so many IC Teams seem to have these days. Another way for colleagues to fire spurious requests and queries at us (often nothing to do with IC), making their problem suddenly our problem and adding even more to our workload – cue poor mental health.
Then there are the awful ‘not fit for IC purpose’ IT solutions which are often foisted off onto us, because there is ‘no budget available’ for anything more suitable, or senior management don’t (or won’t) understand the tools we need to do a good job in an efficient way.
Lack of investment in channels, and the digital technology which supports them, will be a familiar problem for many internal communicators. From clunky intranets to mass mailing platforms more suited to other purposes like external marketing, we struggle with this stuff every day. Inventing elaborate and time-consuming workarounds to do the simplest of things like sending out an all-staff email. More frustration and time consumed which could be better spent – cue poor mental health.
A reality check
The CIPR and PRCA’s Mental Wellbeing Audit report concludes by acknowledging the reality of many PR and IC professionals’ working lives:
“The nature of the PR industry works alongside tight deadlines, long hours, and demanding workloads; however, it is the responsibility of employers to ensure that staff are supported and empowered to prioritise their mental wellbeing.”
That support from employers should not just be about offering their IC employees access to employee assistance schemes, mental health counselling and mindfulness sessions. It is also about addressing some of the fundamental problems which create unreasonable workloads for internal communicators in the workplace, much of which is driven by the behaviour of other colleagues in the organisation and a general lack of investment in the function.
Until this happens, working in PR and IC should perhaps carry a ‘this profession can damage your mental health’ warning!
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
The IC Citizen 