Maintaining relationships is truly an art form –
With clients, businesses, or employees, first impressions mean everything.
Just like building and maintaining relationships with customers or employees, there is an equally important and particular art to building and maintaining a positive relationship with potential employees, and it takes all-hands-on-deck.
Driving this art is an emerging synergy between Marketing and Human Resources, laying the ultimate foundation for your brand strategy and creating a holistic employee experience all-around.
The Role of Marketing + Human Resources
Traditionally, Marketing is known for driving external communications through advertising, branding, design, socials, press, websites, and newsletters. Marketing teams are responsible for building the corporate brand, core values, and market position, reaching customers, clients, investors, and a broader audience with its messaging.
The role of Human Resources, on the other hand, takes charge of internal communications and manages the employee lifecycle, from recruitment to on-the-job training. HR also manages job descriptions, policies and processes, strategic communication, employee onboarding, culture, and conflict resolution, ensuring a competitive edge in a competitive market.
Bringing together the internal communications of HR and the external communications of Marketing creates a symbiotic relationship that ultimately strengthens the Employer Brand and workplace culture.
What is an Employer Brand?
Employer branding is how your business is perceived and presented to employees and potential recruits, leading to better execution, higher productivity, and elevated innovation in the workplace.
An established employer brand creates a relevant connection between the brand’s aspirations, values, needs, and motivation, aiming to align with the people and talent that best suits those pillars.
According to data, 59% of global employers are investing in employer branding as a long-term strategy to retain top talent, establishing an emotional connection between business, employees, and recruits. If done well, your employer brand will feel authentic, meaningful, and consistent across all touchpoints, helping to attract talent, encouraging self-select for fit, and increasing the opportunity to develop long-term, high-producing team members.
Because HR champions for employees and marketing champions for authentic connection, the two can come together to ensure that company standards and ethics are not only promised but delivered. According to a recent LinkedIn survey, positive employer branding potentially cuts employee turnover by 28% and helps cut your costs-per-hire in half.
Bonus!
Ways for HR + Marketing to Work Together and Make an Impact:
Ultimately, HR and Marketing have the same overall objectives, with different target audiences. Creating fluid cross-pollination between Human Resources and Marketing will strengthen your employer branding, messaging, and the recruitment and retention of top talent.
Here are a few of the top ways to create a little synergy between departments:
1. Brand Advocacy: Current employees are one of the best ways to share employee experiences and workplace culture. Human Resources can help select employees that suit an employee advocacy program, with Marketing stepping in to help effectively share and communicate that message. Nearly 38% of people report discovering new brands and opportunities through word-of-mouth, cracking open a new market for the potential hiring pool.
2. Employee Retention: Developing a strong company culture is king, and sharing that culture strengthens employee morale. When employees feel seen and connected to their work and culture, they are more likely to stick around. Clear communication and a strong employer brand are the foundation for employee retention and long-term gains.
3. Inspire Employees: Keeping employees and recruits inspired is a full-time endeavor. Human resources have privileged insight into employee wants and need, and marketing can then step in with creative execution to meet those needs. By sharing insight from both departments, both teams can identify opportunities and obstacles that can be resolved to improve and inspire the employee experience. Working cohesively to inspire employees also enables succinct, timely messages and engaging methodologies.
4. Talent Recruitment: When HR involves marketing and takes direction on how to brand the company, web traffic and the volume of job applicants see an increase. Finding and recruiting potential talent takes a marketing mindset and the skilled messaging of human resources. Using social and marketing platforms to share recruitment needs can help reach new demographics, share messaging in a meaningful way, and engage communities with the brand with fresh perspectives!
5. Strong Onboarding: Onboarding new talent is expensive and time-consuming and, if not done well, leads to negative first impressions. Drawing on the creative, exciting, and engaging marketing tactics to onboard new employees will help make the onboarding process out-of-the-ordinary and interesting. Finding ways to help new recruits feel welcome, meaningful, and engaged will lead to stronger relationships internally and more external advocacy opportunities.
Ready to create some cross-pollinated, synergistic greatness between your teams?
At StellaPop, we’re here for it, and we’re here for you … so let’s make it happen!
