Organisations make huge demands of their HR professionals. Not only are they expected to excel at recruitment, training, and all-round good people practice, nowadays, their sales skills are being called to account.
In another transformational move for the function, HR is increasingly taking on some of the marketing and PR responsibility of selling the company brand to prospective employees, current staff and customers.
Heineken takes branding very seriously. In two of its most recent initiatives around organisational culture and employer branding, the HR function was instrumental.
Heineken UK's head of organisational capability, Cat Kennedy, says: "The importance of our HR colleague experience being in harmony with our employer branding is critical. We must ensure that when we are telling the story of Heineken as a prospective employer, the experience a candidate gets when they join matches their expectations.
"Whether you are a hiring manager, an assigned 'buddy' during someone's induction process, or you're the first person who interacts with a candidate in the recruitment process, we all have the opportunity to play a part in a new colleague's brand experience," adds Kennedy.
Historically HR and corporate communications and PR have had little in common in terms of their core role within a business, but in many organisations they are forging much closer ties.
At Travis Perkins plc, the creation of a new corporate communications function, which quite uniquely, reports to the HR function, is an example of this.
But in order to be able to play their part in "selling" the brand, HR professionals need a clear understanding of the relationship between customer, existing employees and potential employees.
Group head of HR shared services, Chris Davies, says: "Raising awareness of the Travis Perkins Group among a range of external stakeholders is a clear focus of our PR programme, one that works alongside our commercial PR work and our marketing activity. HR needs to recognise that their candidates often come from the customer base and that many of their existing employees are customers, therefore the HR tie-in with marketing and communications is not optional."
More skills
While the core skills that HR has around workforce development, behaviour, values and change are key to ensuring that the employer brand is authentic, credible, and delivering measurable return on investment, there are other skills they need in order to expand their remit and become more holistic HR professionals.
Martin Brook, group HR director at Estée Lauder, says: "The additional skills that HR professionals need to be able to sell the brand effectively include project management, media management, and analytical skills utilising customer relations management and consumer insights.
"I would say that this trend towards taking more responsibility for marketing and promoting the brand is being welcomed by HR professionals as an opportunity to diversify their skills and their impact on the organisational strategy."
