Overwork in PR: A Pricing Problem, Not a Culture Problem

23 July 2026

James McCann:

The PR industry has made genuine efforts to tackle overwork through remote and flexible working. But until agencies and communications teams move beyond valuing hours to adopt capability and outcome-based models, those carrying the greatest responsibilities outside work will continue to pay the highest price.

The working day in public relations rarely begins when someone opens their laptop. It may begin with a sick child, an elderly parent’s appointment or an issue gathering momentum online. By the official start of the day, many practitioners have already completed one shift.

Mine certainly does not begin with the laptop.

When our twins were born in December 2025, my wife and I suddenly found ourselves with three children under two. At the same time, we were caring for my mother at home as her dementia progressed, while I was running my former PR agency through an acquisition.

It was a period measured in feeds, hospital appointments, client calls, legal documents and broken sleep. It reinforced something I now feel strongly: a successful career should not depend on someone’s ability to absorb unlimited demands in the margins of family life.

This is not an edge case. It is the lived reality of a profession in which women remain the majority and many of its most experienced people, male and female, are also caregivers.

New research from Women in PR describes an “Invisible Workforce” sustaining the industry. Female caregivers report working an average of 91 hours each week across paid work, unpaid overtime and responsibilities at home. Three quarters have hidden or downplayed their caring responsibilities, 83% say caregiving has affected their progression and 43% have considered leaving PR.

The structural problem is recognisable in Ireland too. The PRII’s 2025 Census estimates that 62% of Ireland’s approximately 4,000 PR professionals are women. Eighty per cent work from home at least once a week, rising to 84% among women.

That represents real progress. But flexibility has not solved the underlying problem.

The average contracted week in Irish PR is 36.5 hours, yet 83% work beyond it by almost ten hours on average. A third send work-related messages outside normal hours every day, while 36% receive them daily.

Working from home can make those hours easier to accommodate. It does not make them disappear. The proposal is finished after bedtime, the report reviewed from the kitchen table and the briefing prepared before the house wakes.

Flexibility can simply make overservice less visible.

Overservice is an economic problem

Culture, boundaries and management all matter. But overservice is also an economic problem.

Many agencies still sell retainers calculated through anticipated staff hours. When requirements grow but fees and scope remain fixed, the practitioner absorbs the gap.

The same pattern exists in-house, where communications teams are asked to cover more channels, provide more analysis and respond faster without equivalent resources.

Because PR professionals take pride in delivering, they find a way. That commitment protects the client or organisation but conceals the true cost of delivery.

For caregivers, that cost is especially high. Traditional ideas of commitment still favour the person available after hours, at evening events or for travel at short notice. Women in PR found all of these act as barriers.

The result is a leadership pipeline that quietly filters out experienced people through demands increasingly incompatible with the realities of their lives.

We need to change what clients buy

Flexible and remote working should remain central to the industry. But the next step must be a transition from selling hours to selling defined capabilities and outcomes.

A client does not really want 40 hours of an account manager’s time. It wants stronger intelligence, earlier warning of issues, effective media engagement and evidence that communications activity is influencing organisational goals.

The industry has already begun moving in this direction in how it evaluates its work. The PRII Census records a shift away from Advertising Value Equivalence and towards outcomes or impact-based assessment. Our commercial models now need to catch up with our measurement models.

An agency might instead provide a defined media-intelligence, executive-briefing, competitor-analysis or issues-management capability, with agreed outcomes, service levels, human oversight and limits.

This is where AI and agentic tools can make a meaningful difference.

Used properly, they can handle repetitive work such as monitoring, alerts, data structuring, summaries, reports and first drafts. Practitioners remain responsible for judgement, relationships, strategy, creativity and risk.

This is not about replacing PR professionals. It is about giving highly trained professionals greater leverage.

I know that because AI has helped me keep pace during one of the most intense periods of my life. It has not changed the needs of three young children or the reality of dementia, but it has reduced the repetitive work carried in my head and into my evenings.

Work that once took hours can increasingly be initiated in minutes. That has given me something more valuable than productivity: the ability to be present with my family without feeling that work is collapsing behind me.

There is genuine joy in that.

It should reach the account executive working after bedtime, the account manager checking coverage before the school run and the communications manager responding from a hospital corridor.

But this cannot become another version of “do more with less”. If technology compresses four hours into forty minutes, some of that benefit must return to the people whose expertise made the outcome possible.

Otherwise, we will simply automate the overservice culture.

Technology will not fix this without conscious choices. According to the PRII Census, 66% welcome the use of AI in public relations, but only 39% work in organisations with an AI usage policy and just 34% have received internal AI training.

Without training, governance and a clear operating model, new tools can add work. With them, practitioners can spend less time compiling and more time interpreting and advising.

Agency leaders must resist measuring success solely through utilisation. Clients must accept that value is not determined by the number of human hours consumed. Communications leaders must define outcomes and invest in capabilities that deliver them.

The prize is not merely a more inclusive industry.

Clients receive faster, more measurable work. Agencies protect margins eroded by overservice. In-house teams expand capacity without treating permanent availability as the answer. Experienced practitioners can progress without choosing between their careers and the people who depend on them.

PR has already changed where people work. It must now change how the work itself is valued.

The next generation of tools gives us an opportunity to redesign the model around human expertise rather than human endurance. I have experienced how the right tools can create enough space to remain ambitious at work while being more present at home.

That is not something to fear or ration. It is a benefit the whole profession should be able to share.

We should take it.

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James McCann is co-founder and CEO of Everhaze, the company behind Lú, a conversational agentic AI platform for the public relations industry.