Sarah Waddington’s journey and recipes for an inclusive PR
In this conversation, Sarah Waddington shares her journey into public relations, discussing the challenges women face in the industry, particularly regarding the glass ceiling. She highlights the importance of social mobility and the need for diversity and inclusion within PR. Sarah emphasizes the role of research in understanding these issues and advocates for structural changes in leadership to create equitable career development pathways. She also discusses the significance of mentorship and sponsorship in supporting individuals from diverse backgrounds and concludes with her hopes for the future of public relations, calling for more accountability and knowledge exchange.
Check the other episodes and their summaries and transcripts searching for the Women in PR category. Alternatively, check out my YouTube channel or SoundCloud.
Takeaways (provided by Riverside.fm)
- Sarah fell into public relations by chance but found it fulfilling.
- The glass ceiling remains a significant issue for women in PR.
- Many women in PR struggle to reach management positions.
- Social mobility is crucial for addressing inequalities in PR.
- Diversity and inclusion efforts are often hindered by systemic issues.
- Research is essential for understanding the PR industry’s demographics.
- Leadership must change to foster a more inclusive environment.
- Mentorship and sponsorship can transform careers in PR.
- The future of PR requires accountability and scrutiny.
- There is a need for more funding for evaluation and knowledge exchange.
Transcript (automatically generated by Riverside.fm)
Ana (00:03.672)
Sarah, so wonderful to finally have you here. Welcome to the show.
Sarah Waddington (00:08.326)
Thank you very much for inviting me on.
Ana (00:11.328)
We ask in this podcast, we, myself and I, I ask in this podcast a question that is similar to every guest, academic, practitioner, educator, whatever they see themselves, wonderful and amazing people. But that is why PR, how did you end up in public relations and comms? And there is history there, right? Because we still talk about how now public relations as a profession is overpopulated, if you want, by women.
And still, while we have statistics there, I think the story is more interesting than just the statistics. So how did you end up in PR? Why PR? Of all the professions out there, all of them exciting, of course, none as exciting as PR. But for you, what made it?
Sarah Waddington (01:00.944)
Yeah, I fell into public relations quite by chance, but I felt really glad that I did. So I remember being at school and doing my A levels and we had to do, well, we were pushed into choosing which courses we might want to do at university. And I was completely stuck. I did French, English and German at A level. And I was thinking, maybe I’ll be a translator.
or if that fails, maybe I’ll be a teacher, but didn’t really feel excited about either of those. Now, my mum at the time, I was doing careers advice and push this survey in front of me and you had to input what your interests were, what your personality was like, your likes and your dislikes. Anyway, it churned out a number of opportunities for me and the top one was public relations. I thought, that sounds interesting. And I had a little look around in terms of what the different courses were.
And I chatted to my teachers. Hilariously, one of my teachers told me that when I said I was interested in French in media, told me that that would be just a terrible choice and that I wouldn’t get anywhere if I did media studies. anyway, thankfully, I ignored him and I ended up enrolling in French in media. I still did French because I wanted to hedge my bets, but did French in media. And I did a specialism in PR towards the end. But as part of that…
I had to do two placements and I did one in a PR agency in Leeds and then one in actually at the Northeast branch of What’s Now ITV. And I just loved it. And actually doing the media studies element to it is probably one of the most valuable parts of my role. And so I started there and then immediately graduated and came back and went into a PR firm in Newcastle and then gradually winded in my knowledge.
And the reason I say that is I moved into an integrated marketing agency. So I wanted to experiment marketing understanding and ended up doing an MA in marketing. And my dissertation was all about the role of where women are in public relations and did the replica of the Dozier and Broom study, was some of the Grunigs work, which is why there’s so many women in PR, but so few at management level. And so it’s been really interesting because actually I know that you’re very much in that work.
Sarah Waddington (03:21.798)
My husband Stephen’s work is very much in that area as well. And we’re doing a Missing Women in PR study with the CIPR and socially mobile at the moment. But yeah, it’s just one of those very varied industries, isn’t it? And I was very lucky to get in early doors and it grabbed me and it hasn’t let me go.
Ana (03:37.72)
So why are there so many women in public relations but not at the top then? At least, do you recall what were the things they…
Sarah Waddington (03:43.85)
that’s a big systemic issue, isn’t it? It’s something crazy, isn’t it? terms of this, like, what was it, 80? I don’t even know what the latest figures are. But when I was studying it back then, we’re talking 20 years ago, it was like 80 % women. And, you know, it was flipped when it got to management positions. So I kind of think it’s just so disappointing that there’s been so little change. But people do get around it. You know, what was really interesting about the glass ceiling for me?
Ana (03:56.93)
Yeah.
Sarah Waddington (04:13.042)
I got to a point in my career having worked in a number of different agencies and working myself up into a management role, I got absolutely stuck and I know that I was pegged as problematic because I was of childbearing age and I had male peers who were doing the same job and being paid more and eventually I knew I couldn’t influence that role and I couldn’t see.
opportunities in similar agencies because I felt like I would get the same problem. And so I ultimately started my own business, which I then ran for 13 years. And I think that’s how most people get around that problem. It shouldn’t have to be that way, but it’s still the case.
Ana (04:49.87)
problematic because you were of child rearing age. Definitely not something that I’d like to hear. But inspiring to figure out that the way to get that management position and recognition is to be an entrepreneur. And to a degree, I mean, that’s, think, the scariest thing of all, right? Because the job security that employment promises
to be traded off at child-rearing age, as you called it, for the hustle that owning a business is, is a very, very big hurdle and big challenge. So well done. You have mentioned though two things. You’ve mentioned socially mobile, social mobility. And I’d like you to clarify a little bit.
of that, what is that and what brought your focus on that because I know you’re very, very active and you speak very often about how public relations is actually not that embracing or encompassing or welcoming to everybody as we maybe would claim we are.
Sarah Waddington (06:04.346)
Yeah, so to give a bit of background to listeners, these days I’m actually a non-exec director and act as an advisor to in-house and predominantly agency teams in the creative sectors. But on the side, my husband and I, a few years ago launched Socially Mobile and this was to address some of the deep inequalities within the industry.
And socially mobile, for those who don’t know it, is a 10 week online training school. And the idea is that we don’t ask for any formal education, we just need two years of experience within PR. And we aim to move people from a tactical to a strategic role so they kind of understand the management function better and ultimately to help them increase their earning potential. And it’s working because we can show through the impact reports that people are getting internal promotions.
finding the confidence to launch their own business like I did, or are moving elsewhere and getting significant pay rises. So it’s absolutely fantastic. And the reason for doing that is that, well, if you look at any of the industry reports, and I’m talking UK ones, but I would imagine these would be fairly similar elsewhere, is that
the opportunity is not the same for everyone. And PR is one of those industries, a little bit like media, a little bit like law, where it has become a little bit close to anybody who’s white, male, fairly middle to upper class and well-networked. We have quite a high prevalence of people who have been independently schooled. So that means you go to a school with, know, fee-paying school. I think it’s like…
It’s around 27%. Now the national average here is 7%. So it’s a significant difference. And these people are in management positions and then hiring in their own mirror image. So you’re getting an issue whereby there’s a lot of group think there’s a lot of similarities, but actually it’s inching people out who can’t afford to get to interviews, who just don’t have the networks, don’t know where to look, maybe haven’t considered PR as a career choice.
Sarah Waddington (08:15.162)
And so it’s a big issue. And how I first became interested in it, I guess it was kind of like three things collided. I’m from a single parent background. We really didn’t have very much money at times in my childhood or in my teenage years, I should say. And there were a lot of, we had a lot of challenges in different ways, which I’m not going to, but I was very aware of that.
early on in my career and I could see some of my friends and colleagues who had very, I suddenly realized that we had wildly different backgrounds and there was a confidence to them and opportunities that they had that I just couldn’t match. So interestingly, when I first got my, when I got my first role in agency, I was very lucky that somebody introduced me to the local CIPR committee and asked me if I’d like to join, which was great.
But as I got more and more involved and I became involved with council, there was travel involved and they didn’t at the time, the CIPR didn’t pay expenses. It was like three, six months after and then they paid by cheque. And so you had to front up the money and I didn’t, I just didn’t, we didn’t have that. Do you know what I mean? There was like, there was no space. Back then we didn’t even really use credit cards. And even then when I did get credit cards, that was usually maxed out anyway. And so there was just, I suddenly realized that I had barriers.
that I hadn’t known were barriers compared to other people. So there’s been my background thing, which I’ve noticed more and more. I started to notice more and more. And then I started to notice that when I was talking to other people, I had a lot in common with other, I’m talking from my experiences.
my socioeconomic background experience, but then I started to talk to other people who had similar challenges in different ways, but also perhaps had double disadvantages. So for example, black colleagues who were also from a similar background to me, but actually were encountering bias and racism in the workplace. And I suddenly, I suddenly started to understand this more and these were things I just hadn’t seen. And then as I progressed and became industry president at the CIOPR, I was working with a
Sarah Waddington (10:28.85)
PRCA and just seeing lots of industry reports. I guess the three things collided where everything suddenly made sense and I had my background and my career experience and then looking at these stark figures telling me that actually people can’t get into the industry and when they do they don’t get the opportunities for progression. I mean the CIPR State Profession Report this year says that if you’re not white you’re likely, you’re more likely to get your request for training denied.
So like, was looking at all these things and ultimately Stephen and I decided in COVID having attempted to approach industry bodies to see if they could do something and being knocked back that we would stage a private intervention and that’s how Socially Mobile came about.
Ana (11:12.43)
I need to get my head wrapped around the many things you’ve said. Something that was obvious to me through research is how strong one’s assumptions are when it comes to going into public relations, right? And one of the things that we try to do in my classrooms, and I’ve noticed other colleagues doing, is to insist on the importance of research.
And very often that research in the past has been understood still as serving the organization and its interests. Whereas whoever sits on the non-modernistic, non-advantages positioning of an organization, I think everyone that is sitting on that position was trying to alert people to the fact that
Communication solutions in the past have been just trying to confirm what people thought it was right or to confirm their version of the world, right? And that meant that trickled basically out and had been seen into promotion practices, into how we formed teams and into how we communicated to people. And just finding ways to break those assumptions.
but also the power to reflect on one’s own experience and what that does to how one takes decisions forward. That’s been a long project and I think we’re still in there. You’ve mentioned statistics coming out from the UK that are really scary. And one of the things you did mention is that you think that this is similar around the world.
There’s not that much research around the constituency of public relations as an industry in other places. mean, there are some efforts in Germany, but there’s very insufficient, very little data in parts of the world outside of the UK. So in this sense, we got to compliment the CIPR and colleagues for badgering at it to try to bring more insight into the industry itself.
Sarah Waddington (13:02.642)
Yeah.
Sarah Waddington (13:21.838)
It’s good to have the benchmarking, but in terms of what you were saying earlier, you know, there is still a big issue with the dominant coalition within PR. I mean, you’ve probably seen the research from Lee Edwards from the London School of Economics. She and Sundeep Olaka from University of Leeds have termed something that they call disposable diversity.
And their research shows that there’s a huge amount on hiring for cultural and societal norms, which are completely placed to your point, Anna, because they’re trying to meet their own and client expectations. And it’s really holding back UK D &I progress. They say that there’s such a focus on client services and an emphasis on fit that it favors candidates matching dominant identities. And it makes it so much harder for diverse candidates to get hired.
And that was certainly my experience. was very aware when I first, although I ended up back in Newcastle, which was my original home, I had tried to get a couple of jobs in London and I was such a fish out of water. My clothes weren’t very good. They weren’t right. Even now I can hear my accent ringing. When you’re with London people, my Newcastle accent, my Geordie accent is not strong, but with, yeah, I remember going and just thinking, my God, this is…
I don’t fit here, I don’t fit here. And the problem is that this still happens. And it’s not just about, you know, people from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Really, this is about underrepresented groups, the ones that we also serve through socially mobile. So we’re talking about our black and ethnic minority colleagues, but also our LGBTQ plus colleagues, people with disabilities, women returners, know,
they’re badly served, they leave a lot in the industry. There are groups out there that just need extra support and they’re not seen as appealing by those who are recruiting and it’s a big issue.
Ana (15:25.868)
But having said that, I remember a few years ago something that started me traveling back to the United States was how proud the Hispanic arm of the PRSA, the Public Relations American Association has been. that’s something while I commend their success and I still see the need, I remember coming back home to Europe thinking,
Is that really the way to move forward? If we want to have public relations and comms as facilitators in society, so making societies work better, not only companies, then is that really the way to have people who are from diverse backgrounds creating their own agencies and catering for their special public, right? As if there’s, you know, special needs, special interests, whatever you want. So you say no.
Sarah Waddington (16:18.032)
No.
Sarah Waddington (16:21.978)
It’s great to have a niche and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m like, genuinely, there’s nothing wrong with that. And I commend those people for doing it. But the issue is it doesn’t change the structural norms that we’ve got, which are problematic. And what makes it most frustrating is that all the research dictates the benefits of a diverse workforce, right? We know you get greater productivity, you get greater…
Ana (16:26.345)
you
Sarah Waddington (16:47.73)
creativity and innovation, because you’ve not got a group think, right? You’ve got diversity of thought. From that, you get higher profits, you get reduced staff turn, you you get a better understanding of your customers and stakeholders because you represent the society you seek you to serve. I mean, they’re just a few of the benefits that are defined. So it’s great if you have a niche or your own community and you can serve that and that nurtures you and it rewards you and that works for you. I’m never ever going to knock that, that, know, that’s right and good for you. But
it’s not changing the bad behavior that we’re seeing in practice, which is often weird. And I’m sorry, everybody back to the white middle-class men who are at the top of the industry and who are setting the cultural standards. Part of me is kind of like, do you know what, we’re maybe less than a generation from them retiring and there being a big step change. I’m furious that it will take that. I’m furious about that. But equally, what keeps me feeling good is the number of different initiatives.
that are out there like Socially Mobile that are making a difference. And we feel like with Socially Mobile, we’re coming towards what we’ll be moving towards 150 students through, graduates through. And we like to think we’re creating a little army, diverse army who going out there. They’re progressing in organizations, they’re setting their businesses and then they will also hire you in their mirror image. They understand the importance of diversity. So, you know, I feel like again, there’s big change there.
In the UK, there were some really good, really, really good initiatives. The problem is that we need all of these. And actually, what does it take to make the big change and the big transformation that’s required? You we’ve got the newly formed Asian Communications Network. We’ve got VME PR pros and the blueprinted screen that goes with that. We’ve got people like us. We’ve got a leader like me. You know, I could go on this. You know, there’s a multitude of them. And I’m just like. It’s.
it’s not right that all of these often volunteer led initiatives are having to work so hard and still only achieving a certain amount of progress. And to be honest, that’s something that I know Farzana Baddewel, who’s one of the new co-founders of Asian Communications Network and who is the newly elected incoming president-elect of the CIPR. It’s confusing how it’s done, but she’ll come after Advita Patel next year.
Sarah Waddington (19:10.61)
She’s something she’s looking at in terms of how do we, as a coalition, look at this and create this structural change? What do we need to hold everybody accountable and scrutinize in a closer fashion? But like I say, we’re all volunteers. It’s hard to do on top of the day job.
Ana (19:30.776)
But it’s quite impressive. mean, Advita herself is having her own initiative aiming rebel comms or whatever is called, looking in particular at increasing these speaker profiles. That’s one tip of the iceberg. And maybe what’s fascinating there, because you’ve mentioned the structure is confusing, is how
Sarah Waddington (19:40.368)
Yeah.
Ana (19:56.14)
The CIPR is working on establishing longevity, right? You know who the next president is, but there’s a period of takeover and that makes for smoother initiatives. But let’s go back a little bit, because you spoke about social mobility and what you do. You also mentioned this systemic change in a sense that is needed to ensure opportunities for all.
But that systemic change to a degree you said is dependent on leadership, on leadership changing its approach. So any steps, any ideas on how do we change current leadership? How do we change their minds? How do we give them different, I don’t know, a procedural approach if you want so that diversity is not the scary world of difference, but rather the exciting world of difference.
Sarah Waddington (20:27.858)
100 % dependent on leadership.
Sarah Waddington (20:51.46)
Yeah, it’s about providing challenge, isn’t it? I think there’s a couple of things. There is the carrot and stick approach. I do believe that to create proper change, some discomfort is needed. So I think there is an element of really bad actors should be named and shamed. So I do think that helps take an industry forward. I don’t always love it.
and it can be used badly, but there is an element of having to embrace discomfort. I’ve certainly had to do it. I don’t always get it right, by the way. Diversity is a difficult place to be. Things change. You have to understand different cultures and norms and language evolves and it’s very specific to different communities. And I’m the first to say hands off. I’m not always going to get this right. Please help me learn. And I try and challenge my biases. But again, I always say white UK people, you know, we’re
kind of born racist. There’s a lot of structure in society that you don’t even know until you start to challenge it, until you start to look at it and do your research. You know, you have to say, don’t like, I say to my kids a lot, check your privilege. And that’s something I’ve learned to have to do to me all the time. I have to stop and go, okay, how did, you know, I talk about being further away from the start line at times, you know, but for some people they’re starting way behind me.
And I’ve had to really start to understand that. And this is what I mean about the intersectionality and, know, like, so while I’ve had difficulties from being from a single parent family and not having a lot of money, some people have numerous things on top of that. But the thing for me, where we can get change quite quickly, and I think it would be different if they were being honest with themselves. The best place to start is just measuring. It’s measurement. Like who is in your workforce?
What does that tell you? So I know people, you know, because of award entries and stuff, you see, is all very transactional in terms of where does it get my business forward? They’ll measure now, perhaps, and ethnicity gaps. I’m like, why don’t you measure the socioeconomic background of your workforce? Because actually, just looking at that will give you a very clear picture about high diversities. Measure career progression of the different groups within your workforce.
Sarah Waddington (23:06.578)
Again, it gives you an immediate picture and something to benchmark from in terms of yourself year on year, but also the industry standards and what it looks like. And there are lots and lots of great places to look if you do want support in that area. like measuring socioeconomic diversity, because that’s what we’re leading on here, that’s your best place to start. And then once you know what the issues are, you can start to build a talent pipeline. You can improve your recruitment practices. You can know
start to understand better how to keep and nurture your talent, which is a big issue. And you can start just to look outside of your workplace in terms of more widely, how do you push into communities? How do you build relationships with different initiatives? How do you practice what you’re preaching? Because I know a lot of, I’ve had a lot of black colleagues say to me, you know what it is? If I push, if I get opportunities, I always again think, is it better that somebody else takes this space? Often.
If I say, look, this place is looking for a trustee or whatever it might be. I’ve had to get better at doing that because often it will come back and say, I’ve just Googled that board. It’s all white. No, thank you. And you forget that this is that. But that’s a real challenge for people. You know what mean? And you have to be so thoughtful about it. know, it’s it’s it’s.
Ana (24:20.622)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Waddington (24:26.599)
having an all-white board, the first thing people say, you can tell everybody that you’re really inclusive and everybody’s very welcome in your workplace, but it doesn’t look it. That’s the case. we need to be more thoughtful about that.
Ana (24:42.624)
More thought. I mean, that is a challenging idea in itself, considering that everybody seems to be so pressed with time, right? And there’s the axis and whoever is available. Fair enough. Yeah.
Sarah Waddington (24:52.818)
think it’s an excuse to be pressed for time. It’s short-termism though, isn’t it? It’s not about long-term thinking. And like you take recruitment as one, but I think that’s a really interesting one because this goes across the board in terms of if you want true diversity of workforce, whether that’s black and ethnic minority colleagues, people with disabilities, people with neurodiversity, whatever that might be, what tends to happen as we get into a cycle, right? Someone leaves or we get a new piece of work and you go…
no, we need to hire. So very quickly you put our job description and it will just be on the usual boards. Meanwhile, there’ll be the usual conversations internally like, we need to diversify the workforce, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the work will have been done to get into the communities as just discussed. So you can put those, put those job descriptions in and people like recognize that there’s, you know, you’re one of the better actors and actually it’s worth looking at. And so you get applications from those areas.
Recruitment should be so much longer. We should be more thoughtful about it and be prepared to provide more training. So that means perhaps thinking about people from school leavers onwards and what that might need, what additional needs they might have once they’re in the job. We need to think about things like blind recruitment. You know, the amount of bias and now people are going, well, AI is solution there, not necessarily, but there are lots of things we can do to take out bias within that process. And there’s a huge amount of research on this, but…
You can hear me getting frustrated. It’s because none of the solutions are that difficult. You’ve got to have the will to want to do it. And yes, there is some investment needed in terms of resource and also cost attached because you do have to change the way that you’re operating. But my view is as an initial cost and then that drops, but you’re going to recoup that anyway because your diverse workforce is going to be more productive. It’s going to increase the fees that you’re charging and so on and so forth.
For me, it’s a no brainer, but it just doesn’t happen. It hasn’t had traction yet. yeah, sometimes it feels like you’re banging your head against a brick wall. And then sometimes when you do see the big successes and you see, for example, I look at some of the socially mobile graduates and I’m buzzing about what they’re achieving. And you just think this is going to change. It is changing. And you’ve got to stick with that mentality.
Ana (27:15.406)
And you got to keep on with that, right? So badger, badger attitude, we go back to the badgering attitude and how important that is. Now, the other thing that you mentioned, considering your, you’ve mentioned your socioeconomic background and the lessons and hurdles, the lessons you learned and the hurdles you had to overpass. And you link that to career development pathways, just earlier as we spoke about it. This systemic change.
Sarah Waddington (27:22.331)
Yeah.
Ana (27:44.182)
I mean, yes, we can try to go into schools, we can try to go in communities, so go beyond. mean, your kids, might have a higher chance, right, of entering in public relations because they know us. So they know of the job, whereas others might learn from it, either from the movies or not at all. But once you’re in and we talk about equitable career development pathways and you spoke about mothers, you spoke about different ages, different…
Sarah Waddington (27:56.689)
Yeah.
Ana (28:12.344)
different genders, different, right? Very, very different than what would be vanilla in a way. How would you either recommend or how did you manage to come up with these equitable career development pathways? What would be some best practices? I can share just to start the conversation here where a few years ago we’ve produced a…
three book called Women in PR to sort of be a companion if you want, a theoretical and practical companion to the podcast. And in one of the articles there, somebody was saying, you know, shared leadership responsibilities, positions would be one way to do it. And I presented those results to a conference and someone from the German audience here said, well, you know, that’s nice, but doesn’t work.
because that means that you’re basically lumping way more work on two different people. The only one who wins is the organization, while you’re actually stressing two people more and not rewarding either of them to the full investment and their benefit. And that is thought in itself, although you think it’s inclusive, it’s actually hindering women particularly, even more than…
you know, giving them just one position and one office to hold. So what are your best practices?
Sarah Waddington (29:38.45)
And you’re also potentially… Yeah, I mean, it’s a question. Firstly, I’d say, I hope people don’t look at PR in the movies and think that’s what it’s like. So that’s quite terrifying idea, but I hear what you’re saying. And then secondly, how do we get more inclusive practices? And you’re right, I think that’s a really insightful point, by the way, that you’ve just given. I think the other thing is, when you give people response bunches like that, we can also sometimes be guilty of asking…
I’m going to use the victim, it’s a clunky word here, people from specific groups to find a solution to the systemic barriers that holding them back and it’s not their problem. It’s the management’s problems to find those. They need to look elsewhere. We’ve got to stop asking. For example, black people, how do they, how to make them feel inclusive in the office? It can be triggering for people and they have to relive experiences perhaps that make them deeply upset.
and it’s just not right, we should know this. And so good practice can be, we talked about removing recruitment barriers, but considering where they might be biased. know, staff surveys are a good place to start. But I think just being curious, ask employees, a lot of the UK, for example, is run by SMEs, you we’re 95 plus, I think it’s higher percentage of SMEs, we’re not big organizations. And the big organizations are forced to do this.
Be curious, ask employees about experiences. And like I say, build insights. And that could be through surveys, can be focus groups, exit interviews. Why are you losing people all the time? What is their experience? A lot of organizations don’t have whistleblowing policies. How easy is it for people to say, do you know what? I’m experiencing microaggressions every single day from my manager. I think most people are very
discomforted by that. It’s not an easy thing to do anyway. And microaggressions particularly are difficult because what you might think is perfectly reasonable, another person might be finding absolutely desperately upsetting. sometimes it’s just an absolute lack of understanding there. So it’s about understanding these things, getting the insight and providing education.
Sarah Waddington (31:50.298)
what my son is a training materials so that people can start to understand their own behaviors and perhaps question their own biases. You know, like there are plenty of again service that you can take if you want to take responsibility personally to find out whether you have biases or not. I think, you know, like say if you’re measuring, you can start to see who isn’t progressing throughout the workplace and you can quite quickly get to the bottom if you want to be honest with yourselves about why that’s not happening and you can put an action place in against that.
And this works, these all work for building a fully inclusive workforce. It’s not just about diversity of class here. This works for absolutely everybody and understanding what is happening or why something’s not happening. And I think the other thing is just thinking about why things fail. And it’s often because there’ll be a bad experience within the office or initiatives are brought in as a knee-jerk reaction because something’s happened and it’s like, something must be done.
and it’s not done with heart and with real intent, and that’s a problem. So you’ve got to make sure that EDI strategies are aligned to the organizational strategy, should be a core part of it. The board should be looking at this, it should be an agenda item for them. And so it really needs a cohesive approach and it needs a committee who’s responsible for the work led by employer insight.
And it’s a really good place for the commerce function to be because they’re the kind of ideas and as Anne Gregory says, about the conscience of an organization. So it makes sense that they start with us to be front and center a bit and making sure the alignment with management is there.
Ana (33:32.874)
eyes and ears of the organization, but we just need to be the same as the organization, right? mean, this idea, I mean, both you and I and then Steven as well, we’ve had conversations about how public relations actually needs to be for better or worse of a term, the devil’s advocate. It needs to start not being the servant in the organization, but rather the weird one, the odd one out that is hired.
to point out exactly those things where the organization could do better by thinking differently. But that brings me to another question and that is mentorship. Mentorship and sponsoring others not necessarily financially but supporting giving forward. That’s something that you’ve mentioned throughout our conversation, how you’ve learned for yourself to let go.
in a sense, realizing that you can’t do it all and you don’t want to do it all. And that the rewarding possibility of that letting go means putting forward others and therefore creating a pathway, paving a pathway for others to progress, to grow, to learn. How do you think we can better integrate these initiatives? Is there a way in which sponsorship and mentorship can be
better integrated between associations like the ones you’ve spoken about, know, CIPR, between initiatives like the ones you’re leading and then obviously businesses, businesses as agencies, businesses as in-house departments. How do we bring that all together?
Sarah Waddington (35:17.222)
Yeah, this is such a difficult question because I think sponsorship and coaching and mentor mentoring are really important. They’re really, really important. I’m I’ve just qualified as a professional performance coach and it’s taken 18, possibly more months to go through a very rigorous training program. And one of the reasons I want to do that is I was being called upon to do more and more executive coaching and mentoring.
And I’m very aware from my own career how good or bad an impact coaching and mentoring can have on someone’s career. And so there are some great initiatives out there where people can find mentors and coaches. But there are very few of those people who are signed up for those schemes who are actually formally qualified in that area. So while I really…
I have a slightly different view to a lot of people. Everybody goes, yes, yes, this is really important. It’s great. I’m not saying it’s not. I do think they’re great, but you have to be very careful in who is providing those services. So my first thing would always be if you are looking either to become a mentor of a coach, please do your homework, do the work, go get a qualification, do some training. And if you are looking for someone, please find someone who has done that training. wouldn’t, you you want someone, you would go to a doctor who hadn’t done his.
I haven’t done all our qualifications, is it? It’s a similar thing. This is about how you progress and the support that you have. And I’m really sorry, that’s my doorbell. Can I run and get it? Will we be able to edit? Yes, sorry.
Ana (36:47.446)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we will. We will. That’s all right.
Sarah Waddington (37:19.196)
So sorry.
Ana (37:20.556)
All right, let’s go back. We were talking about briefly, we were talking about mentorship and sponsorship and you were saying that it’s quite important that people do check both the initiatives as well as their qualifications basically that they put forward.
Sarah Waddington (37:41.36)
Yeah, mentoring and sponsorship, absolutely key. I would just say, if you are looking for someone to be a mentor or a coach, make sure they’re done training in that area because it tends to be one of those things where people are very well-meaning, but the impact it can have in your career if you don’t get the right advice can be quite significant. I’m a qualified coach. I did 18 plus months of training to get to that point. So I’m very, very aware of how rigorous that was.
and the difference in my approach now I’ve done that. So please, if you’re gonna be a mentor or a coach, it’s brilliant, do the work. If you’re looking for someone, make sure they’ve done the training. But these areas are so important because I think if you have someone who can give you that lift, who can open the door, it’s a game changer, it’s transformational for your career. And so it’s really, really important that we offer those services. How we unify those across the board, I don’t know. I don’t even know if…
that’s the right thing either, because I think it’s very individual, the support that people need, depending on their own experiences and where they are. I’ve needed different help at different times. I remember having set my own business up. There was one time where it had gone brilliantly, but I was about five years in and I was just out of ideas and I was tired and I didn’t know where to take it next. And I spoke to a colleague about it and she was running a business membership organization in the Northeast. And she said, come to our conference, come along to this.
And it was a game changer. went there and that’s when I watched a speaker. I thought, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to launch a video division. And this is, this is way back when it was quite new in terms of everybody was diversifying into these areas. And, know, that led to a podcast division and so on and so forth. And that was the thing that I needed at that point. And that was thanks to her intervention then, but at different times I’ve needed someone to work with me as a coach to say.
I’ve been like, don’t know what I want to do with my career. I’ve been lost. And that’s taken a number of different sessions to tease that out. And he just, I just think it’s so individual that the different provision that we have in the UK is probably a good thing. But my main thing is about how do we tell people about it so they know how to get it, where to go.
Ana (40:00.13)
The great balance right in between having a lot of options or having none and then finding the way to go forward. One more question before we go. We started asking, I’ve started asking you how you ended up in PR. We spoke about quite a lot about the efforts that you’re making to make PR a more diverse.
profession, not only in spirit, but also in reality. So let’s look ahead. It’s a turbulent time as it is. And I think every generation thinks their time is the most turbulent, but ours certainly is. But looking forward, five, 10 years, how do you see PR going? What do you think, what sort of changes you think we’re going to see?
Sarah Waddington (40:51.858)
But you know, I would love to think we’d be in a very different place and we wouldn’t be repeating some of these conversations. I’m not massively confident, but that’s my big hope. I would love to see stronger incentives generally for more diverse workforces. I think that would be a good thing that if everybody, not just companies over 250 employees were forced to measure.
know, those audits are really, really powerful things and they hold a mirror up to the organization and to the management team. And, you know, if they were forced to publish as well, it means there is scrutiny and accountability that wouldn’t be there otherwise. So I think that there should be some like specific targets. I’d love to see what I love to see.
funding Ring Fence for these kind of initiatives. know, socially mobile was set up from seed funding from my business that I was still running when we first set up and Wads Inc. And then we had some really kind founding sponsors who came in behind us and then we’ve had individual donors and then we’ve continued to have some sponsorship and then anybody who pays for their place helps keep us sustainable. But it’s really difficult and in the economic.
situation we’re in right now, fundraising has been harder and harder. We have to get more more inventive and you know, it’s tough. And I think the other thing is we just also need more, this will play to you and your passion for research, we need more funding for evaluation and knowledge exchange. You know, there was some really good work out there. How do we share that? How do we continue to invest in that?
So that would be my big hope for the next few years, more scrutiny, more accountability, more knowledge exchange and more funding for all these things so we can share the best practice.
Ana (42:39.54)
loads of to-do’s for the next five to ten years. Sarah, as usual, we’ll just have to our battles moving forward, but we have very worthy battles looking forward. Sarah, as usual, very wonderful hearing from you, highly inspirational, took loads of notes. I hope everybody else did. Let’s keep in touch. But until we meet again, thank you so very much for your time.
Sarah Waddington (42:42.642)
There’s always loads of to-dos. Yeah.
Sarah Waddington (43:06.94)
Thanks so much, Anna. It’s been great.