Does your HR strategy have a marketing mindset?
/If we have learned anything over the last two years it’s surely that the corporate world has become considerably more disruptive than has ever been the case before.
That’s not just about the ways in which responses to the pandemic have reshaped the workplace and altered conventional attitudes around what it means to be ‘at’ work; it’s also about how the talent market has materially altered, and what businesses now need to do to remain relevant not only to their customers, but also to their internal markets.
So, what do I mean by that? In simple terms, traditional operational models in business have tended toward an external and internal focus. On the outside, customers, clients, suppliers, shareholders, etc. On the inside, employees.
Conventional approaches to each differed, insofar as organisations inclined toward wooing their external partners, and managing their internal stakeholders.
A bit like a West End show, the external market was treated to the glitz of the costumes, the makeup, the lighting effects, and the choreography, but behind the scenes the functional business of delivering the show out front was far less glamourous. The pandemic has changed that, or at least helped to change it.
It is no longer enough to attract applications from the brightest and the best, pay them well, and trust they’ll stay.
Instead, businesses increasingly need to apply a marketing mindset to their operational processes and practices to ensure their employees continue to ‘buy’ the product (in this case, their own role within the organisation).
A demand driven market
Across the economy, businesses tightened their belts. In many cases furlough transitioned to redundancy, the sectors most affected by lockdown shed jobs, turnover and profits shrank.
Those who suddenly found themselves working from home, often enjoying better work/life balance, began to question fundamental aspects of their previous life.
Large numbers of people decided they didn’t want to commute and didn’t want to spend every day in the office. Many others suddenly saw a different life ahead of them, one in which their current employer didn’t feature at all.
The result? Huge amounts of churn in employment, and a quiet but rapid transition to a demand driven market where, increasingly, the talent was calling the shots and had the pick of the available roles.
Smart businesses have long been focused on attracting the best talent. The difference today is that there has been a sudden proliferation in the number and scope of the kind of roles they might be interested in.
Competition among candidates may still be fierce, but competition between organisations has never been hotter.
A marketing mindset
A quarter of a century ago, a DVD mail order sales and rental business began trading out of Scotts Valley in California. Customers were able to rent or buy a movie and have it mailed to them. Rentals would then be mailed back in pre-paid bags.
They could have stopped there, and they would have disappeared without a trace long before now. Instead, a year after launch, they opened a subscription service.
Over the years, they continued to iterate, continued to reinvent their offer to keep it relevant to changing consumer habits driven by changing technology. Unlike the Blockbuster chain which persevered with an outdated operational model, the business stayed ahead of the game.
A decade after their first day of trading, Netflix launched the world’s first online streaming service, and six years later diversified again, becoming a creator of original television content. Today Netflix is worth $96 billion.
It is this progressive marketing mindset that will now help to shape the fortunes of businesses in a fast-changing, dynamic, volatile, and unpredictable corporate world – not just on the external touchpoints with existing and potential customers, but also with the employees who will be expected to keep them commercially relevant.
What does this mean for those organisations?
There are some clear areas that businesses will need to focus on to maintain the same kind of internal relevance that they hope to achieve externally. But crucially, it’s essential that this work is celebrated to ensure internal audiences appreciate how outcomes benefit them.
1. Effective workforce planning
Attention to detail when it comes to finding the right blend of individual skills and experience achieves two things: first it ensures that teams enjoy a packaged skills base that sets them up for success; second, it reduces frustration and the perception that teams are at a disadvantage from the outset.
2. Attracting the right talent
This is naturally a given. In order for an organisation to function efficiently, it needs to have the right people with the right skills in the right roles achieving the right outcomes. Recruitment strategy matters, but it’s only the first step in building a marketing mindset approach to HR and business operations.
3. Retooling and reskilling
‘That’s the way we’ve always done it’ is the philosophy most likely to leave a business dead in the water. That, and the ‘not invented here’ attitude where businesses are unwilling to adopt ideas and practices they haven’t generated themselves.
The corporate landscape is constantly evolving – your skills and capabilities need to constantly evolve, too. In turn this will keep your people feeling stimulated and stretched, and more likely to find satisfaction in achievement.
4. Keep your talent mobile
Moving people around the organisation strategically has a number of benefits. First, employees gain a better understanding of the business as a whole; second, they develop new skills on the job; third, their new-found knowledge enables them to make a contribution that benefits the organisation as a whole, rather than their individual function or business unit.
Conclusion
Contrary to popular belief, recruiting and retaining the best people is not the endgame. The endgame is creating an organisation that stretches and challenges them to achieve things they may never have considered themselves capable of achieving, and to see reward in their own development.
Only then will you have the perfect storm of the best people working in an organisation that is always relevant – both on the inside and the outside.
If you’ds like to find out more about how Constantia Consulting can help to create a marketing mindset within your HR strategy, please get in touch – we’d love to talk to you.
