A Marketing Approach to Human Resources
Increasingly, we are seeing that the most effective organizations in the world use marketing tools and fundamentals for Human Resources Management.
It is also becoming common to find that the HR Managers are coming from the commercial area. Why?
As a human resources consultant with a marketing background, my perspective starts from the idea of understanding needs, solutions, satisfaction and the selling process. From this, we need to see employees as clients with different needs, but still searching for solutions.
HR Professionals 
should be able to offer an employee a value proposition, understanding them, developing these products and being able to sell them effectively.
Companies today understand that HR Management is no longer an operational and administrative role but has become a strategic process that is aligned to the organizational strategy and objectives.
In that sense, it is oriented not only to recruit but “attract”; not only to implement retention programs but to “understand” and analyze what makes an employee choose to stay in an organization; not only to inform but to “communicate effectively” and sell.
How can leading HR organizations address the needs of their employees and ensure that sufficient value is offered by their employees?
Some of the Marketing basics are as follows:
- Brand Building:Companies must seek to position a brand in the minds of their future employees (internal potential clients). In order to motivate this potential talent to choose our company, we need to go beyond the desired competence to build a corporate identity with attractive attributes for these professionals. Nowadays, the Talent chooses where to work.
- Business Intelligence: If an organization wants to define a competitive value proposition, it has to understand the current and potential market, the competitors and their value proposition.Marketers understand what they need to offer to be attractive to clients; HR Professionals need to understand what they need to offer or improve to be attractive for employees.
To cover this process, organizations need to develop satisfaction surveys for internal input, and perception surveys for external input. These plans are not isolated efforts but should be managed as part of an aligned plan. - Market Segmentation Not all our clients have the same needs or provide the same return to the company. Similarly, if a company manages to obtain information about its employees, segment them and transform information into knowledge, HR will be able to make better decisions in terms of attracting, developing, directing (leadership style) and developing better retention plans to their employees.
- Happy Clients: Organizations grow because they have happy customers. In any business process, marketers seek the repurchase of clients. If there is no repurchase with happiness; there is no future for the company. The most successful companies are making efforts to retain their employees by treating them in the best way.
Ken Blanchard, an expert in strategic planning, said: “If we treat those who serve our customer as if they were the most important people in the company, they will treat our customers as if they were the most important people in the world.”
If employees of the company are treated as if they were the best talent in the market and perceive themselves as the best talent, the client satisfaction and maximizing productivity will come by default.
Diego Cubas is a Partner in the Cornerstone Lima Office, Peru
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