Too little budget and staff, garden-variety thinking: this frustrates PR professionals
Too few staff, too little budget and too much garden-variety thinking: these are the factors that frustrate communications managers the most in their jobs. That is the result of an online survey by News aktuell and Faktenkontor.
More than 120 PR professionals from companies and PR agencies in Switzerland took part in the survey. According to the survey, most communications managers are burdened by the fact that their department or agency has too few employees for the tasks at hand: 34 percent are frustrated by a lack of personnel resources. The second most frustrating factor is a lack of budget (33 percent). Equally grueling are the departmental boundaries that still exist: 33 percent of respondents are troubled by the garden-variety thinking on the job.
The high level of external determination in professional communications is also a burden: 31 percent of PR professionals are annoyed that their work is often defined by external factors. The perennial topic of "evaluating PR" also weighs on the mind, as 31 percent are most frustrated by the fact that success in their job cannot be clearly measured. Rigid corporate structures (24 percent) still put every fourth PR professional in a bad mood.
By contrast, there is less of a problem with the management itself or with one's own team. Only one in eight PR professionals is frustrated by incompetent bosses or unreliable team members (12 percent each). The relationship with marketing also gives little cause for frustration: only 9 percent are annoyed that management favors the marketing department. The least worrying aspect is external support: a meager 6 percent of respondents suffer from unreliable service providers.
The complete list of results
- Too few human resources 34%
- Budget too low 33%
- Too much gardener thinking 33%
- High external determination 31%
- Successes not clearly measurable 31%
- Rigid corporate structures 24%
- Lack of "being heard" by top management 19%
- Successes not valued 17%
- Too little time for further training 17%
- Poor work-life balance 16%
- Too little independent work 16%
- Low content 12%
- Incompetent or bad bosses 12%
- Unreliable team members 12%
- Management prefers marketing department 9%
- Unreliable service providers 6%
