I was lucky enough to have a very flexible placement that
allowed me to work the hours per week that the workload required and also
allowed the ease of doing work from anywhere via laptop and mobile. This was
amazing at first and meant no matter where I was or what I was doing I was able
to keep tabs on what was happening. However, it took less then two weeks to
realise as great as the flexibility was, it was a slight pain as there really
is no such thing as office hours in PR.
Between the organisation, coordination of events, the media
relations and social media management, it started to feel like my days never
ended. You could wake up to a call at 7am in the morning and still be replying
to emails at 11pm at night. It very quickly became exhausting trying to keep up
with everyone’s constant demands and expectation that you were available 24
hours a day 7 days a week. I decided pretty quickly that I needed to limit my
work hours and times and devised a schedule of how many hours and what exact
day I would spend working.
Needless to say, this did not last very long at all. I have
the flexibility with my hours but there is no such flexibility in the
responsibilities of your job title and description. As the Public Relations and
Media Officer for this company I had the responsibility to be accountable no
matter the times or day.
This included running stock around for photos shoots on a
Sunday afternoon, 8am meetings and nights kept free for events. If you had told
me this is what I was in for at the beginning I would have been a little unsure
its what I wanted, yet now I realise it comes part of the package of working in
public relations. You need to be available sometimes because you don’t always
know when the next great opportunity for you brand to be represented will pop
up and no good opportunity should be let to just pass by. You also will never
know when a crisis may strike; you always need to be at the ready for what any
given day may throw at you.
This is the true beauty of Public Relations. Every day truly
is different, and you may have to be a little more available but with the
sacrifice comes the reward of being able to do a job that you truly enjoy.
