I was doing a little bit of prep for the latest Comms Unplugged podcast recently. It’s amazing what can emerge when you have time and space to let your mind take a little wander.
by Darren Caveney
It was during this quality thinking time that I got to thinking about the number of extra hours your average comms person worked during 2020.
So I crunched a few numbers.
We can assume that most full time in-house comms people are contracted for 37 hour weeks.
Most will work more than this, in reality.
But in a Covid year?
Based on the many comms teams and individuals I know and have spoken with we can conservatively say that they were averaging 50 hours a week in 2020.
Before you throw rotten fruit and your unwanted leftover coconut Quality Street my way, I know many of you have exceeded that figure. I regularly heard reports of 60-70 hour weeks.
Even on days off for leave many still logged into team calls, gold commands, leadership briefings and the like. I’ve also heard of people saying it’s not worth taking leave – because there’s not a lot to do and they will have to call into meetings and check their emails anyway.
But we’ll stick with 50 hours per weeks as a conservative and realistic average - that’s an additional 13 hours of work per week.
If we work back from Lockdown 1 until the end of 2020 that’s 40 weeks.
40 weeks x 13 hours = 520 hours.
Which equates to 14 weeks.
Which is over a quarter of a year.
That’s how much extra work you likely did in 2020.
So if you were feeling worn out at any point there are your 520 reasons why.
What’s my point?
Well the way 2021 is shaping up it’ll be no different for most comms people.
We can expect more of the same.
What can we do to counter this?
I’ve talked before about having a mental health and wellbeing checklist for comms teams. That’s easy to suggest, of course, but sometimes harder to achieve. And it’s easy to slip out of good habits and into poorer ones. We all do it.
So, we need to carry on working towards getting a better balance as we navigate Lockdown 3, however long this one will last.
But I do also think that these hours should be being reported. By which I mean in your monthly reports which get circulated internally.
Not in a showy ‘look at me’ way. But to keep on reminding people of the invaluable work and very long hours which are still being put in. Because people do forget, or never noticed in the first place.
Across your team – whether you’re a team of two or a team of 15 – this is highly significant extra work, pressure, stress and deliverables each week and month.
Comms doesn’t have an exclusive cartel on this, of course, but I am convinced that as a profession we do work longer hours than most of the other professional services in our organisations.
Is that your experience too?
So report back these figures each month and then when you turn down those lunchtime meeting requests (and you 100% should) you can remind people that you worked an extra quarter of a year last year as it is.
And that your lunchtime stroll is the most important part of your working day.
So there.
Darren Caveney is creator of comms2point0 and owner of specialist consultancy Creative Communicators Ltd
Image via SADSM Archives
