Is PR’s career ladder breaking at both ends?

AI is changing the work that brings people into PR, while experienced practitioners are being pushed out at the other end. What happens to the judgement built between them?

For years, one of the more reassuring arguments about AI and public relations has been that technology may automate tasks, but it cannot replace human judgement. I broadly agree. What concerns me is that we spend much less time talking about where that judgement comes from.

Nobody starts out knowing how to advise a chief executive through a crisis, spot when a small issue is becoming a reputational problem or recognise when the technically correct response is wrong for the circumstances. People find their way into PR through very different routes, and if we want a profession that is genuinely more diverse, those routes need to stay open.

Once people are here, much of their judgement is built by doing the job alongside people who have done it before. You draft something and somebody explains why it is not quite right. You watch experienced colleagues navigate competing agendas. You make smaller decisions before being trusted with bigger ones. Over time, experience becomes judgement.

AI is changing that process because it can take on more of the work on which people traditionally built their early experience. That can be a very good thing. Nobody should spend hours on repetitive tasks simply because previous generations had to. The harder question is what replaces the learning that came with some of that work.

If organisations respond by employing fewer people at the start of their careers, they may save money now and discover later that the pipeline of people ready for senior responsibility has narrowed. A career ladder can cope with the shape of its first rung changing. It becomes much harder to climb if rungs snap off and nothing takes their place.

At the same time, ageism keeps coming up in conversations with experienced practitioners as they move into the later stages of their careers, alongside difficulty finding the next role and assumptions about whether they remain digitally relevant.

Put those two ends together and the contradiction is hard to ignore. We keep saying human judgement will become more valuable as AI becomes more capable, while potentially weakening both the way that judgement is developed and our ability to retain the people who already possess it. That looks less like a narrow AI skills gap and more like a professional succession problem.

We need to think much more deliberately about how people continue to learn by doing as routine work changes, how experienced practitioners stay involved for longer, and how judgement is passed on rather than lost.

Some of the frustrations CIPR members raise with me are much more practical. Digital tools should be intuitive, processes straightforward and volunteering easier. Where something useful can be improved quickly, we should get on with it.

I want CIPR to work brilliantly for members on the inside and be ambitious for the profession on the outside. The internal machinery should enable our ambition, not define it. Getting the member experience right is essential, but it should give us the platform to tackle the bigger questions shaping members’ working lives.

That means looking outward: to employers, recruiters, technology companies, organisations tackling ageism and inequality, other professions facing the same disruption, and partners who may know things we do not. It also means bringing current practitioner experience into Board discussions about where professional value is moving and what members will need next.

That is what better supported, better respected and better valued means to me: helping people navigate change, strengthening recognition of professional judgement, and making sure the value of that expertise is reflected in influence, investment, pay and fees.

I’m standing for President-Elect this year because, with CIPR approaching its 80th anniversary, this feels like a moment to think seriously about what the profession needs next.

We have spent years asking what AI can do. We now need to spend much more time asking what kind of profession we are building around it. If judgement is going to remain one of PR’s greatest strengths, we need people coming through who can develop it, experienced people around to pass it on, and a profession willing to move fast enough to protect both.

David Hamilton is standing for CIPR President-Elect. Voting opens on Wednesday 16 September 2026. Find out more  about his campaign at davidhamilton.co.uk.