Why HR Needs to Be More Like Marketing

Today’s rapidly evolving workplace has generated more challenges in retaining, managing & engaging staff than any other time. The Increased mobility, job selection based on social profile & your companies purpose, places significant stress on a traditional HR approach. In this regard, your company’s HR processes & policies can foster a positive reputation or damage your image irreparably.

Every business needs two critical resources to succeed: customers and employees. Engaging staff has much in common with pleasing your customers, and classic marketing techniques can give your business the edge it needs to attract and retain talented people. That’s why it’s becoming increasingly vital for HR managers to function like marketing departments.

The popularity and validity of approaching HR like marketing are clearly illustrated by the rise of the CMO, or chief marketing officer, and the CHRO, or chief human resources officer. More companies are filling these positions to manage highly demanding and interrelated HR and regular business activities. The CHRO frequently manages a crack team of specialists, and CHRO duties include developing influence, branding job positions and recruiting diverse talent.

Influence & branding at the core

Power is often viewed as a negative word because it implies coercion or domination. However, power is an essential business tool, and developing influence can be a subtle way of exerting power in the workplace. Developing Influence includes showing leadership, leading by example, fostering an understanding of what’s expected of each worker and building a healthy reputation for your company across digital and personal connections.

Branding is a key element of any marketing approach to HR. Used effectively, branding can facilitate corporate transformations that place employee welfare in the highest regard. Employees should understand that they have the power to advance their situations by producing value for the company. Effective branding can transform the traditional role of HR staff into career-building partners and key resources for motivated workers.

10 Reasons why HR Managers Should Think Like CMO

The following 10 ideas from marketing departments can brand your company, streamline operations, build influence and attract and retain the most qualified workers:

1. Creating Core Values and Ensuring Your Staff Understands Them

Every company has its own core values that can range from progressive to conservative. Using the right language and recruitment forums and targeting your audience can attract and inspire the right people to join the company based on shared beliefs.

2. Fostering Employee Engagement

Employee engagement generates the same level of benefits as customer engagement in today’s digital environment, and companies can use classic marketing strategies to keep their staff members engaged. Effective employee engagement when viewed through the lens of what is known today is easily distilled down to seven pillars of Trust, Impact, Alignment, Empowerment, Recognition, Development & Workplace.

3. Developing Loyalty

Retaining staff is critical to cut training expenses and reduce the time spent in learning curves. It’s less expensive to market to your existing customers, and the same holds true for retaining the best employees. You can use many marketing best practices for fostering customer loyalty when implementing staff-retention strategies. These loyalty-generating techniques include–but aren’t limited to–the following ideas:

• Offering structured dispute resolution
• Showing respect for each worker and demanding it in return
• Consulting staff on operational changes
• Seeking employee input on new products and services
• Avoiding micromanagement and encouraging creative solutions
• Providing educational and advancement opportunities
• Encouraging workers to be team players
• Recognising staff for superior job performances

4. Expanding Staff’s Marketing Roles

Turning your workers into brand ambassadors offers astonishing business benefits in today’s digital ecosphere where people share information, collaborate on projects and network with vast audiences in social media, peer-to-peer groups and constituencies of friends and business associates. Turning your most satisfied workers into cheerleaders for the company and its products and services facilitates and enhances both recruitment and retention.

5. Connecting with Social Communities

Social media have almost replaced traditional communities because people no longer depend on geography or even language to connect with others. People can meet and interact with like-minded individuals based on attitudes, politics, education and other characteristics. HR departments can use these social platforms to recruit staff, connect with staff outside the workplace and train workers more effectively than ever.

6. Encouraging HR Staff to Achieve Measurable Results

Too often, HR departments are tasked with putting out fires instead of proactively preventing them. However, encouraging HR departments to meet predefined goals through measurable KPIs can empower them to work more effectively. When targets are met, it becomes easier to get budget approvals for new ideas and programs.

7. Using Data Proactively

Most companies run on big data, and marketers have always used analytical insights to drive marketing campaigns, website features, customer-facing apps and PR efforts. HR departments can use big data to develop internal policies, design recruitment campaigns, strengthen employee loyalty and retain staff for longer periods of employment. Data provides insights into crafting department-specific incentives, better training programs, opportunities for cross-training and advancement and other employee-centric benefits

8. Segmenting Staff Based on Skills and Attitudes

Understanding your staff’s abilities, preferences, attitudes and motives enables you to segment each group of workers based on their individual profiles. This, in turn, allows you to enhance performance, optimise productivity and customise employee programs for optimal results. Segmenting your staff also enables you to offer flexible shifts or personal breaks based on personal requirements, work preferences and available hours. For example, some workers might perform better when they work short shifts throughout the day or non-traditional shifts.

9. Building a Company Culture

HR represents your company’s culture at its most basic level, and the culture that you want to foster depends on the personal interactions between employees and management, your brand’s ‘personality’ and the company’s policies about work behaviour, personal prejudices and cultural differences. Fostering an understanding of the company’s culture can prevent bad behaviour, bullying and mistaken interpretations of what’s expected of each employee.

10. Automating Core Business Processes

Today’s software solutions, when fully integrated into your company’s operating systems, can automate many routine tasks, reduce the need to make multiple entries and free employees from time-consuming administrative tasks so that they can concentrate on more fulfilling and productive activities. These tools can also streamline HR duties such as payroll, acquisition, enablement, engagement, remuneration, recognition retention and development.

HR Tomorrow

The essential role of HR continues to evolve from managing employees in restrictive ways and enforcing rules and arbitrary standards of behaviour to strategies that are employee-centric. Outsourcing and providing flexible work arrangements become increasingly important for companies to remain competitive and attract top talent. HR managers will need to embrace big data and analytics to become more valuable and cost-efficient because strategic planning will become an increasingly essential part of HR. Regardless of whether a company has a CMO, the chief human resources officer will need to perform many of the duties that typically fall to a dedicated CMO. HR departments are becoming leaner and more strategically focused and marketing savvy.

You might not be ready to adopt every recommendation, but taking a marketing approach to HR offers increased efficiency, lower operating costs and greater employee satisfaction. The longer you delay in implementing this employee-centric approach, the greater the chances that your competitors will steal your staff or successfully recruit prospects that you’ve targeted for key positions. Think of how competitive athletic recruiters at universities have become, and you begin to see why a marketing strategy for HR has become the standard practice of today’s most successful companies. Providing a better employee experience takes leadership, coaching skills and advanced techniques that clearly mirror modern marketing strategies.