Tip Sheet: A New 'Glue' Concept to Make Staff Stick Around 
By Ted Pincus
Whether you're in PR agency management or heading the PR staff of an organization, one of the most frequently recurring nightmares disrupting your sleep nowadays must be employee retention.
If employee relationships are the glue that keeps your clients, or that maintains the rapport of top corporate management, what guarantees that the employee will stick for the long term?
First, consider the scope of the problem. Turnover is a chronic dilemma. According to the latest Stevens Gould Pincus survey of 150 top PR agencies, annual staff turnover is now more than 20%, and more than 24% on average for larger agencies. The prospect of a fifth of your investment in recruiting and training walking out the door every year is staggering. Couple this with the incalculable damage to precious client or departmental relationships, and you have a serious threat to growth, let alone survival.Note: This summary was provided by the Arthur W. Page Society and Burson-Marsteller, and it summarizes the "Authentic Enterprise" session, which took place on April 10, 2008.)
Onward & Upward: PR Business Poised for Growth and Profits
Tired of hearing the word "recession" yet? If so, don't worry--it won't be mentioned again (not in this article, anyway), because all signs indicate that the public relations profession is moving onward and upward at warp speed, in spite of the current economic woes. Fortune magazine even touted PR as one of the 10 fastest-growing professions, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. What's more, the behemoths of the corporate world--clients that agency execs salivate over--recognize PR as growing asset to their business strategies.
"PR is more valuable to a brand than advertising is," says Bruce Himelstein, senior vice president of sales and marketing, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. "Whether it is business press, lifestyle or crisis management, we probably have a much more integrated look at how we put Ritz into our marketplace than even our advertising approach.
Best Practices in Market Research
Market research is the foundation and first step of most every successful measurement effort. While the research needs vary greatly from organization to organization, there are general rules and best practices that can be applied for success. According to Mike Daniels, managing director of Report International, communications professionals should consider these general best practices when embarking on a market research initiative:
1. Ensure the questions answered are directly relevant to your needs—don’t overburden a questionnaire with irrelevant questions, which will just serve to alienate the respondent.
2. Read more
Required Summer Reading
Memorial Day has come and gone, which can only mean one thing: Summer is upon is, and with it comes vacations and weekend getaways to the beach. But that doesn't mean communicators' minds are turned off to learning new things that can better their business acumen upon their return to the office. With that, courtesy of the 2008 Counselors Academy Book Club, here is the first of four book reviews that should inspire your summer reading.
Reviewed by Monty Hagler, APR
President, RLF/mhagler@rlfcommunications.com
Book name, title, author, publisher
Partners In Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace, Mark Perry, Penguin Press, 2007
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...more research
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