HR professionals wear many hats these days, not only within the traditional boundaries of their profession but across the organization.
Lately, they’ve been doing a lot of marketing.
In the new world of work, the HR professional is a storyteller. He or she must now be competent in the creation of communication strategies that will not only enlighten employees but enable them to carry their organization’s story to potential candidates -- and all external audiences.
Katharine Mobley, global chief marketing officer for First Advantage, thinks that HR should think like marketers and always be marketing. In an interview conducted for the 2018 HR Technology Conference, Mobley says, “Marketing has always been about getting people to buy in to who you are and what you do. HR has evolved so much in the past decade, and, now, much of the work of the HR function includes getting that external buy-in, whether it’s from current employees, potential employees or just the community at large. HR practitioners are leveraging tools from the marketing toolkit to make their jobs easier and more effective.”
HR’s ability to be effective marketers, and to tell their organization’s story through various channels, requires excellent communication skills and the ability to articulate their organization’s “voice” and to rally the employee advocates internally and externally to build engagement with prospective candidates.
What’s the key to success? Two-way communication. You won’t know if your efforts are working unless you listen and engage. “Social listening is having an incredible impact on the way we measure the effectiveness of HR communications externally,” Mobley says. “You can’t determine the success of a campaign unless you can measure its impact, and, through the use of social listening tools, you can essentially run experiments to determine how to most effectively communicate your employer brand and employee engagement outside the company.”
The future of “HR MarComm” is increasingly focused on communication personalization and engagement. How are you communicating and engaging with your internal and external audiences?
Please join @shrmnextchat at 3:00 p.m. ET on March 20 for #Nextchat with Katharine Mobley (@KatharineMobley). We’ll chat about how HR can think and strategize like marketers and build communication strategies to establish a voice and tell their stories to aid in building their brand and accomplishing their goals.
Q1. In what ways is HR becoming the “new marketing?”
Q2. What tools can HR professionals leverage from marketing’s toolkit to make their jobs easier and more effective?
Q3. What are some tips for how HR can achieve buy-in, whether it’s from current employees, potential employees or the community at large?
Q4. Where do you think organizations are encountering the biggest challenges with workplace communication today—whether internally or with talent acquisition efforts?
Q5. Message tone is critical whether communicating externally to prospective candidates or employees. What advice can you share with HR for determining how to set the tone for these workplace communications?
Q6. What HR technologies do you see as having the most positive influence today on HR’s internal and external communication efforts?
Q7. Analytics are important for measuring the impact of marketing and communication campaigns. Which communication and marketing metrics should HR be paying attention to and why?
Q8. What advice can you share with HR professionals for how they can better collaborate across the organization—especially with marketing and communications departments?
How to participate in an HR Twitter chat
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