EY Employee death: Time to reflect and reinforce best practices for the PR industry: Moushumi Dutt, Content Advisory

Trigger Warning: This content discusses sensitive topics around toxic work culture which may be upsetting or triggering for some readers. If you have experienced trauma, please exercise caution and take care of yourself. 

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Wake -Up Call for the PR industry

The wake-up call should have been sounded long ago. It should not have taken the death of a young life for us to turn the mirror on our workplaces and their culture of hustle and grind that accords scant if any, importance to work-life balance.

But there it is. And the soul-searching must begin in earnest. Now.

Our houses need to be put in order, and we should resolve to weed out and uproot any practices or mindsets that reward or equate long hours at work and working through holidays and after-office hours as signs of competence, loyalty, and diligence. 

We, the communication and PR industry, which has the gloss of glamour on the outside, has much introspection to do in this regard.

Support the young professionals 

While at the top, it may all seem smooth and shiny, it is the young hires and the junior employees who are, mostly, the ones expected to do the heavy lifting when it comes to handling demanding, exacting clients, unhelpful media colleagues and their managers’ expectations of them in terms of deliverables and performance.

These youngsters' trials and tribulations at the workplace are seldom considered that. They are told it is all part of the learning, growth curve, and adulting. It is time we stopped this BS and saw it for what it is. 

​Time for all leaders and CEOs to get closer to the ground realities and ensure that the communication channels inside their own organizations are seamless and not bottled up. Keep your ears open and eyes wide open to know who the source of continued stress is and if there is a pattern of unreasonable demands and uncouth behavior, call it out, control it but please do not ignore and let the situation be status quo. That will and does make things tougher and in the long run it harms the organizational reputation.

Flip the script , create safe space for our young PR workforce

Let us flip this script. Let us create safe and considerate spaces for our young workforce.

We need to provide them with all the scaffolding they need to ease into and grow in their jobs. Our expectations from them should be realistic and reasonable:

1) Ensuring that their work-life balance rests squarely and firmly with managers and it superiors.

2) Periodic check-ins with them to assess their comfort, stress, motivation levels and morale should be mandatory for all PR firms and comms teams.

We are a young industry and teeming with a very young workforce.

At the middle and top levels, we have seasoned professionals who are extremely good with their work and have built fairly successful consulting organizations. But the thing to watch out here is that however large and fast-paced your workplaces become, you must at all times, be in touch with the younger teams, spend time with them,  and give them an opportunity to have candid conversations with the leadership teams, on a regular basis.

Earn their trust, don't ignore the troublemakers and speak up for your teams when you have had enough from a client, a journalist or someone within the organization.

Whatever else happens, do not look the other way when the early signs of a workplace crisis has come to your attention. Ours is a fragile industry. And it is our responsibility to raise many generations of PR professionals in a happy, work hard -play hard, workplace which holds mutual respect as its highest moral compass.

Moushumi Dutt is a senior corporate communication advisor.

Editor's note: There is legal recourse available for mental harassment at the workplace It can be punished under the law. People are also protected under The Right to equality under Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, which can be applied to cases of harassment at the workplace based on gender, caste and religion.