Introduction This is a double challenge. Firstly we need to recognise the need to communicate what we do to the wider world. Secondly we need to be prepared to start advertising our services and celebrating our successes. It is about seeing things from the perception of others.
There are some books and publications to help HR undertake this role; however more has been published under the umbrella of marketing training. The principles and audiences are the same, so we can use these resources as well as ones aimed at promoting professional services in a wider context. That said, we can also use some of the excellent materials available in the general marketing arena.
Footnote – This article is not intended to encourage HR departments to re-brand to OD; indeed the challenge is to celebrate what you do and tell people in an appropriate way for them. Any department or function that calls themselves an OD function, I would ask them, “what business diagnostic tools do you use to identify business needs and to position your offer?” OD requires a completely different positioning from inside the organisation, and this positioning needs to be driven from the top; not from within a function. —————————————————————————————-
As the business environment changes, so does the potential contribution of HR and organisational development (OD) teams. As the day to day workload increases, often the profile of these functions diminishes.
Why do it?
This is a big jump from the direction many HR-related functions have been making in recent years.
For example,there is no point promoting talent management services or recruitment strategies to front line staff – they are just not interested. Equally, hard selling career development to managers is not effective – many managers will want to keep their best people and (wrongly) believe that by not encouraging them to develop, they will stay in the team longer. I know this is not best for the business, but if we are trying to raise the profile we need to see things from our customers’ perspective.
From a professional and holistic point of view we want to tell the world about what we do, yet the reality is they (the public, our customers etc) are just not interested. We need to frame our offer for each audience.
As HR or OD professionals, we need to learn from how companies market to their diverse audience. As a function, do you use your internal communication or marketing team to help communicate key messages?
You would not use a training consultant to design your comp and benefits systems would you? So why look at marketing any differently? As the saying goes – different strokes for different folks.
Who is the audience?Whilst that is for you to work out, the following is a useful guide:
Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organisational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com © This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and direct links maintained
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Interesting blog post: http://rapidbi.com/marketing-od-hrd-from-tactical-to-strategy/
Reading blog post: http://rapidbi.com/marketing-od-hrd-from-tactical-to-strategy/