of HR’s work is done internally? The most obvious way is for
HR to engage with external customers directly. Some do that
by having all senior HR staff visit a customer location once per
month or by linking in with their HR counterparts in the cus-tomer
organizations. However, these approaches are often not
sustainable over the longer term. A more sustainable approach
is to align HR with marketing because marketing is the depart-ment
that is expected to hear the voice of the customer on an
ongoing basis.
When HR hears the voice of the external customer, HR begins
to describe its work differently. Instead of saying HR will do a
training program that will build leadership capacity, HR says
the external customers need a certain kind of value and the orga-nization
will develop leaders to deliver that value. When HR
professionals hear the voice of the external customer, they elevate
HR’s contribution from a service provider to a business partner. If
HR professionals only think internally, then a senior leader is the
customer and HR is a service provider. By focusing on the senior
leaders’ customer, HR functions as a partner to the leaders to co-develop
solutions for that customer.
The arguments are compelling that HR needs to hear the voice
of the external customer regularly and effectively. In order to
do this, HR should become familiar with marketing’s customer
research and analytics. Marketing regularly does customer surveys
and understands customers’ perception of the organization. If HR
professionals understand those findings as well, they can use that
knowledge to define what should be their priorities internally to
deliver maximum value to the external customer.
INSIGHT 2:
FOCUS ON FINDING HIDDEN TALENT
HR has developed considerable expertise in talent selection,
increasing the probability that they can choose the best candidate
from a group of candidates. The new recruitment frontier is find-ing
hidden talent – i.e., candidates who should be working at their
organization, but these candidates are not applying or do not even
know the organization exists.
HR’s current efforts to use social media to find hidden talent par-allels
how marketing uses social media to attract new customers and
retain existing customers. Another effective way to discover hidden
talent is to develop an “employment brand,” which is the labour mar-ket’s
perception of employment in your organization. Essentially,
HR organizations use their business’s marketing approach to pro-duce
and service branding for their recruitment advertising and the
creation of a powerful employment brand. The employment brand
packages all employment initiatives under an integrated set of sym-bols
and key messages. The messages must be clear and consistent
– if not, your employment brand message may be lost. A good exam-ple
of a successful employment brand is one promoted by a major
retail organization that developed an employment brand by re-using
the exact colors, promotional materials and language included in its
advertisements and brand development to the external customer.
HR should develop an employment brand that is appealing to
current and potential employees as well as to “hidden talent.” They
should align the employment brand tightly with the marketing
brand that is known to customers and ensure that the employ-ment
brand reinforces the marketing brand.
hr practice
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28 ❚ CONFERENCE ISSUE 2019 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
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