The Work Sphere: Dividing the Personal and Professional

“Professionalism: It’s NOT the job you DO, It’s HOW you DO the job.”
– Anonymous

How often have you heard the following when a coworker picks up their phone: "Hello? Hi Mom. No, I'm at work... at work, Mom. I can't talk to you right now." And the conversation goes on for another 10 minutes. This is a huge pet peeve of mine, but more than that, I think it indicates a lack of professionalism in the workplace.

 

The workplace is just that... a place for work. A place for you to get paid for the tasks you do there. If you simply must take a call during work, direct it to your mobile and step out of the room to take it. Seems simple enough to me.

Some of you may think this is a little harsh... that I'm too much of a buzzkill. I'll allow it. Do I want you to be miserable at your work? NO! Do I want you to make friends with your colleagues? OF COURSE! Enjoying what you do and liking your workplace leads to happier employees, who in turn do better at their jobs. I just believe that we can be a little too lax in our measures of professionalism.

Many workplaces have a set of standards for professionalism and integrity that are laid out in an employee handbook. These can include everything from dress code to personal calls to internet browsing (do you really think your company isn't aware of what exactly you're checking out on the world wide web?) As an employee of any company, you have a special responsibility as their representative to project the image they want their customers to see, even if you aren't actually client-facing. It's also important to note that this responsibility extends to any and all mediums in which you can be connected back to the company.

To bring it back to a PR standpoint, think of your personal branding. Your personal brand is the "you" that other people see - it's what they think when your name comes up in conversation. A personal brand is synonymous with a reputation so it's very important to cultivate a good one. Blade Creative Branding wrote a great blog post on the importance of personal branding and it's definitely worth a read.

What do you think? Am I being a little too harsh or do you think we're allowing our professional/personal lives to blend a little too much?

Skills That Thrill

One of the basic tenets of the Communications industry is the ability to write convincingly, concisely, and above all, correctly.

However, I'm seeing far too many people either in my profession or trying to get into my profession who have horrible writing skills. We're positioning ourselves as Communications experts but people are still not using they're/there/their correctly!

I understand that not all of us are born with the innate ability to spell every word properly or have grammatical skills that would put the Associated Press editor to shame. However, with all of the resources available (spell-check, thesaurus in .com or book format, style guides), there really is no excuse for poor writing.

What kind of person or company would hire a Communications professional who submits a proposal with this sentence in it: "teh communications plan would include a detailed analysiss of the companey's stakeholder groups, including a breakdown of there most pressing issue."

Like in all facets of life, there does appear to be a grey area here... in that of character-limited communications (Twitter, anyone?) Even though you get used to driving out 140 character statements, sometimes you may run into trouble. 'To' becomes '2' and you will see a few more abbreviations or acronyms than usual. 

I have heard the following excuse too often: "It's just Twitter! Why should I care about how correct it is?" Well, I don't buy into the notion of practice writing - even if it's not for a job, blog posts or tweets are out on the internet forever and so should be proofread as deeply as any work piece. Perhaps the one exception? Texting on your phone to family or friends. I am guilty of text speak... and there are a few occasions in which it's appropriate (on my phone only!) I say 'perhaps' when talking about texting because it still bothers me if my fat and clumsy fingers cause me to send a text out with errors in it. The people I text with have become used to me following an error with the correct spelling/word usage. Call me nitpicky but it really 'grinds my gears' when I write something wrong.

I don't know it all and I definitely need to take another look at a PR style guide (tip: keep one on hand), but I do have a few years of university English under my belt (aka a burning need to proofread anything I see.)

Having a little trouble with some common grammar mistakes? Check out this great infographic from Socially Stacked - it definitely helped me out!