HR has always been an important function to any business. It’s the first practice to enter and last one to leave. Many publications have been printed on effectiveness and best practices in HR. I believe that rather than inventing too much new, we can use the best practices and framework applied across other functions to prove that HR already has all the tools at their disposal. I breakdown HR into marketers (attract & Retain), Service providers (performance & quality) and sourcers (source & distribute). Today I will concentrate on HR “the marketers” and how marketing frameworks can be applied to the world of HR.
Marketing, in the words of Wikipedia, is “the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling the product or service”. Humans have been involved with marketing since we started living as a society. It’s a complex process of understanding the needs of the market and valuating our offering through the eyes of the buyer. Same products’ value can vary for different individuals, irrespective of the cost, and hence a marketer need to master need and situation analysis to exploit the situation and generate maximum value. In the end he need to make sure that product is matched to the right customer to generate optimal sustainable value.
Considering the importance of this field, numerous researches have been conducted and various frameworks have been developed. Without going into much detail, I would like to introduce the three frameworks most commonly used in marketing:
Situation Analysis
5C’s – Study of the current market and industry by focusing on Company, Customer, Collaborator, Condition and Competition.
Market Analysis
STP – Segmentation, targeting and positioning techniques are used to cut the fat and find out the optimal customer providing most value.
Product Mix
4P’s – Desirable match with between company capabilities and market needs are created through Product, Price, Placement and Promotion.
These frameworks have served well for marketing but I would like to propose that a similar approach can be applied to human resources too. Filtering business objectives through these frameworks will help in getting the correct talent match for the organization and enhance human capital within the organization.
HR can make use of the 5Cs to master talent market. A thorough understanding of the company, conditions and culture is required to tighten up the talent requirement and exploit talent market. Study of customer (future or current employees) trends such as change in education, culture mix, movement can not only provide best resource match for today but also the future direction for the organization. Knowing what your competition is doing to attract top talent and what can be done to be a step ahead can be a key differentiation and finally understanding your collaborators (core business, suppliers etc) are keeping your employees motivated can help tremendously in retaining talent.
Once HR understand the game they are in, STP can help place them in the best position possible. HR, along with the business leaders, need to carve out what kind of company are they. This vision and mission will be used as a positioning strategy for the organization. Potential and current employees will be segmented based on various metrics that support the organization strategies and target segments will emerge based on the organizational strategic focus. Organization position is tailored for each targeted employee section to attract top talent.
Now that HR has found the targeted segment and organization position, they need to figure out the attractiveness factor. 4Ps can answer that. By using product (position/title), price (total reward), placement (where to hire) and promotion (advertising, job fair, sponsorship etc), HR can attract and retain top talent. By targeting the employee first and then creating attractiveness factor, HR has now created a customized environment for the employee that best suit his/her needs. No more there is a need to pay top $ to employees. By balancing the monetary and non-monetary needs, companies can create a more satisfying experience.
Hence next time HR think about creating a framework, metric, dashboard or critical success factor, they should look towards their marketing department to see what they are doing.
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