Public Relations – Time for a Rooney Rule?
Simon Erskine Locke, Founder & CEO of CommunicationsMatchTM
The National Football League’s Rooney Rule is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. With coach Brian Flores suing teams and the league, the first response to the question: Should PR have a Rooney Rule for hiring agencies or people, may be to recoil with a variation of “Hell no!”
Tempting though that may be, there would be no need for a Rooney Rule if discrimination against Black coaches, or diversity in PR, were not long-standing issues.
The question we need to ask is why has a two-decade old rule, originally written to ensure at least one candidate of color was considered for head coaching, coordinator and senior football operation positions, not succeeded?
There are a number of reasons. Perhaps the most glaringly obvious are the lack of diversity among owners making hiring decisions and that there has been no accountability for actually hiring candidates of color.
There are many who would agree that every agency search or employee hire in the public relations and marketing industries should include diverse firms and people. Some have put into practice their own version of the Rooney Rule.
At CommunicationsMatch™ we have advocated for, and incorporated the ability to include diverse firms in agency and professional searches. As we developed the Agency Select™ RFQ/RFP tools with RFP Associates, questions about diversity, equity, and inclusion were built in.
But as with the hiring of employees (or coaches in the NFL), unless organizations apply these principles and actually hire diverse people or firms, real change won’t happen. We need to learn the lessons of the Rooney Rule:
- Rules can drive greater inclusion of diverse people into the hiring process.
- A rule itself is not enough to increase the hiring of diverse candidates.
- For rules to work there must be consequences if they are not adhered to.
- Those in power tend to hire those most like themselves.
- Change requires those making hiring decisions to change behaviors.
Most CCOs, CMOs, agency owners, CEOs, and leaders in our industry have good intentions, but just like in the NFL, when making hiring decisions, consciously or unconsciously they ask themselves: Who am I most comfortable working with?
What we don’t ask enough is: Does my team actually reflect the diversity of my audience? Why is it that I am not able to attract and retain diverse candidates? What is the experience of diverse people in my firm? Do I only think about hiring diverse firms for multi-cultural programs? Does my track record demonstrate the hiring of diverse people and firms?
It is important to acknowledge the basic realities of the agency and employee hiring process - if we are to move forward. As the NFL, and the experience of our industry show, when presented with a range of candidates it is all too easy for leaders to choose people who look like or come from the same backgrounds as they do. If we do not change this dynamic, for all the rules we put in place, in another 20 years our industry will not have changed – just like the NFL.
Communications leaders need to be self-aware enough to consciously avoid this trap. The best will seek out and value diversity as a superpower to grow businesses more rapidly.
Unless hiring diverse talent is practiced with intent, we will not succeed. A Rooney Rule in PR can frame an intentional approach to hiring. But for it to be effective, companies need to hold themselves accountable, be willing to be held accountable, and be transparent by sharing data and progress.
Clients have a significant role to play. For large companies, in particular, diversity is increasingly a pillar of the employee and agency hiring process. All companies making the conscious choice to hire diverse firms and people sends the strongest message of all for change.
Waiting for outside forces to drive change is never the right approach. We need our industry ‘owners,’ in agencies, C-suites, corporate communications and marketing departments, to learn from the NFL’s failures, or risk becoming the story.
About the Author: Simon Erskine Locke is founder & CEO of communications agency and professional search and services platform, CommunicationsMatch™, and a regular contributor to CommPRO.biz. CommunicationsMatch’s technology helps clients search, shortlist and hire agencies and professionals by industry and communications expertise, location, size, diversity and designations. CommunicationsMatch powers PRSA’s Find a Firm search tools, and developed the industry’s first integrated agency search and RFP tools, Agency Select™, with RFP Associates.
