Why your HR team should hire a marketer

Employees are internal clients, of course, but burnishing your organization’s employer brand is essential to attracting, hiring and retaining top talent.

Cross-departmental collaboration is helping organizations tap employees’ skill sets in new and exciting ways.

Consider how well HR and marketing work together. Given that HR handles recruitment and is increasingly focused on managing the employer brand, including a marketer on your HR team makes sense.

According to Harvard Business Review, 40 percent of CEOs surveyed said they rely on employer branding to secure their long-term hiring needs. When it comes to branding, who better than a marketer to take the lead?

Explore these six key reasons why your HR team could use a marketer:

1. HR is rooted in marketing principles. HR pros play an integral role in shaping culture, from the way the employer brand is represented during recruiting to the way employees perceive the company. As com says, “The authenticity of the employer brand depends on HR and marketing working together to create an employee experience that is true to the brand.”

2. Marketers know how to nurture relationships online. Marketers tend to be up on the latest technology tools and platforms to help build customer relationships, says Rajveer Gangwar on LinkedIn. Just as marketers use social media to engage customers, such tactics should be applied to recruitment and retention efforts. Having a marketing-minded HR team member can help you stay on the cutting edge.

3. Employer reputation management will help with talent acquisition. According to a 2016 Glassdoor survey, 69 percent of people said they are likely to apply for a job if the hiring organization manages its employer brand actively (e.g., responds to reviews, updates its profile, shares updates on the culture and work environment). Having a marketing person on your HR team can ensure that you are addressing employee reviews and other feedback appropriately and promptly.

4. A marketer can help maintain a consistent voice across all channels. You probably already have a great team of marketers who work hard to establish branded collateral, so shouldn’t HR benefit from that as well? Dell is one of many organizations that realized an HR partnership with marketing would be a win/win. Not only did the pairing allow for a more consistent employer brand identity, but having marketing step in for selected duties helped the HR pros focus on the recruiting tasks that they did best.

5. In-house marketing can help HR improve staff morale. You don’t want to wait until your employees leave your organization to find out what they really thought about the organization. Keeping the lines of communication open and monitoring digital conversations (as marketers do) can provide valuable insights about what drives and motivates your employees. In turn, you can determine which HR programs are working and whether you should implement new ones.

Learn the data and analytics ropes from marketing. Today’s marketers have more data and insights to guide their decision making than ever before. So does HR—if it can learn how to track and measure performance. Bringing on a marketer to track relevant metrics can help HR improve employee engagement.

From recruitment to employee relations to retention, HR is more complex than ever before. If you can add a player to your HR team, consider someone who can think like a marketer and elevate your employer brand.

A version of this article first appeared on Shelly Kramer’s blog, v3B.

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