The CRF Institute believes it is time to take both HR and employer branding to a next level.

It’s no surprise that some of the best-known high-street brands are also some of the best ‘employer brands’ too. While companies such as Google, Apple, eBay and Sony all regularly top polls for having the most recognised consumer brand, they are also the companies ordinary people most aspire to work at if offered the chance. Such is the strength of the employer brand, is that they can still have the power to attract top talent even when all around them appears to be collapsing.

But companies who are aware of this fact also know that successful employer branding has a much more broader remit than simply attracting, retaining and engaging talent. A strong employer brand is also what creates trust amongst customers, investors and shareholders. Which is also why it is HR professionals (not just marketers) who must also become an important player in corporate and product marketing of the organisation. It is only when HR incorporates marketing philosophy, and the principles and instruments behind the concept of employer branding (recognition, insight and visibility), that it has all the necessary skills to win the war for customers, investors and shareholders. In fact some might suggest that unless HR is willing to do this, the HR director is in danger of losing his job to the marketing director.

Achieving this is not easy. HR professionals need a new set of competencies to fulfill a role as a so -called ‘HR Marketer’. But the task is not insurmountable.

Take two very different organisations: Starbucks, which makes and sells coffee, and Shell, which produces and sells energy and petrochemicals. Despite working in different sectors, both companies know that the value of their brand is more than just the coffee they brew or the petrol they sell at the pumps. They know it is their brand-value that really represents everything the companies stand for – which is why most of what they stand for is actually embodied in the people they employ.

It also explains why the marketing and HR functions at these companies are strongly interrelated. Both have created positions that bridge the two traditionally separated disciplines. Starbucks calls its top HR marketer the global employer brand manager, which indicates most of his time is spent firmly on the HR side of marketing. Starbuck’s regards this as crucial because the company is renowned worldwide for the ethical codes every employee has to live by.

Shell has taken this approach even one step further: Its marketing department is actually integrated into the HR department, and its global marketing manager is also manager recruitment and global HR communications manager.

“It is HR and marketing together, and a completely different way of thinking”, says Shell UK’s Navjot Singh who has presided over the newly created position since 2009. In an interview with HR Magazine he says: “The two functions may use a different language, but they are both in the business of selling the brand. I want our HR people to understand the common tools, the language and techniques marketers use that have a direct impact on HR's ability to do its job.” In fact Singh warns fellow HR managers to be alert: “If you are not strategic, the marketing director could end up taking your job and being the new HR director.”

To some extent, Singh’s prophecy has already materialised at Shell. Although he describes himself as an ‘HR person’, he originally joined Shell as a VP of customer relationship management. Before that he was marketing manager at Daimler Chrysler. In a way, the marketer has already taken over some part of the HR function at Shell UK. Time indeed for HR managers to be alert.

Know your business and know your customers

Unfortunately, the traditional organisation chart, plus the way in which most responsibilities and competencies are divided up within companies, does not help to create a strong position for HR as marketer. Marketing, communication and HR are still separated, each in their own individual silo. In most companies they report to different executives in the board and seldom are there any interdisciplinary brand teams. In fact, it is almost impossible to synchronise corporate, product and employer branding.

There are, however, three global business trends and developments that will continue to show that HR’s importance to marketing is increasing. They have been discussed in a recent article by CRF Institute – ‘Marketing and HR’ – first published in December 2010.

First is the growing influence of global reputation management, which puts people management issues in the centre of the branding process. Second is the increasing growth of the services-based economy, where products or services are delivered and differentiated only by the highly skilled and trained people organisations employ. Thirdly, there is a growing importance of intangible assets, like human and intellectual capital as sources of strategic advantage.

HR managers need to take note of this and adopt a marketing philosophy. They must create an HR/marketing position for themselves and need to actually develop HR marketing activities.
Adopting a marketing philosophy means HR professionals have to have a much fuller knowledge of the sector their company operates in. As well as seeing their employees as customers, they must see the company’s customers as their customers too. In order to service them, and create customer satisfaction and loyalty, the HR function also has to be recognised by managers as well as employees as a first class provider of HR services.

From employer branding to an overall marketing view

Doing all of this does make a difference. In companies that place employer branding high on the business agenda, HR has a comparatively high impact on the business strategy and is well represented in the highest levels of management. [This is something the CRF Institute recognises in its Top Employers programmes.]

Maybe it is because of their top position within the company that the best HR leaders are able to create awareness for employer branding. But it could also be the other way around; that by working at, and advocating employer branding, that they create a top position for themselves.

Creating and maintaining an employer brand means HR has already adopted a marketing vision. It also means HR’s theories and processes for attracting, maintaining and developing customer relationships are being translated into terms of employee relationships. Most HR managers are accustomed to terms like Employee Value Proposition (EVP), so for HR marketers, concepts like brand values, positioning, and targeting should be natural extensions to what they already know. And by adopting this mind-set, the best HR professionals are not just capable of selling the company as an employer to the labour market, but they also know how to sell their department and themselves to board and directors.

But according to HR’s greatest thinker, Dave Ulrich, now is the time to take this marketing approach one step further. If asked ‘who are your customers?’ most HR managers (he says) still say: ‘employees, line managers and directors.’ They are wrong, Ulrich argues. HR’s customers are the ones who are willing to spend their money to buy products or services or who want to invest money into the company, he says. And the only thing that matters as a result of HR’s input is the amount of money spent or invested, not the amount of talented employees recruited, retained or engaged.

Shell’s Sing warns his HR colleagues to be strategic, otherwise the marketing director will take over. And indeed, on a strategic level HR and marketing have much in common. Furthermore, he says “it is important to know how markets work, as well as the demographic trends in critical markets, the technological forces facing organisations and the political choices that might affect your organisation”.

Finally, it is not only on the strategic level that Ulrich wants HR professionals to adopt a marketing view. All of Ulrich’s famous HR competencies can easily be translated into terms of marketing. Doing this shows just how important employer branding is in all facets of HR. On all levels, the use of marketing tools and insights will increase the value HR can add to the business. At the same time it shows how HR deliverables in terms of employer branding have a huge impact on marketing.