Building relationship is critical in Public Relations – Faith Senam Ocloo

Founder, Women in PR Ghana, Faith Senam Ocloo, has disclosed what pushed her to start the Women in PR Ghana NGO.

According to her, in the public relations industry, most people perceive the job as managing information from one party to the other, whereas there are so many other things that play out like building relationships.

She stated that building relationships are a key thing about public relations and women are very great people when it comes to building relationships.

“This is because women are natural multitaskers who do a lot of things at the same time. Also naturally they have empathy to listen to others so, they naturally gravitate towards public relations because of certain things that come naturally to them and the profession,” she explained.

Speaking to Eunice Tornyi on e.tv Ghana’s African Women’s Voices on why she started this initiative, she said,

“We do have a lot of women in public relations but the irony is that we have more women at the entry-level so then people get to the top and once they rise through the cooperate ladder, data has it that we’re having fewer women at the top.

"Due to this, the reverse happens in boardrooms, corporate worlds and leadership positions where we have more men than women and even a Nigerian report shows that we have almost 30% of women in leadership roles."

“So the question is why do we have a lot of women at the entry-level and why don’t we have those same women in leadership positions? So, this was a bit of a challenge, hence I realized that we need to find a way to bring these women out,” she emphasised.

Faith stated that the work of women always puts them in the background where they are not seen because they have to plan, coordinate and do all sorts of things. With women being in the background, Faith decided to come up with this initiative “so they can also have the spotlight on them.”