“How marketing can sell your personnel product”

Article from “People Management”    13 June 1996.

“Viewpoint”

“How marketing can sell your personnel product”.

As a profession we are constantly urged to be more strategic. Many HR people have been convinced that the way to do this is to adopt “best practice” techniques whenever possible Recently a trend to question the benefits claimed by some techniques, and to topple management gurus from their pedestals, has become evident. If we now realise that strategic nirvana cannot come through re-engineered, competency-based, 360-degree appraisal, or whatever, where do we go next?

Marketing is a management discipline that aims to analyse consumers’ motivation, and so predict their purchasing behaviour. On the basis of such analysis, the marketer defines the product to satisfy different segments of the market, then prices, distributes and promotes the product accordingly. If we see employment as a product, and employees as consumers of employment, then marketing can provide a useful model of what personnel should be doing to be strategic.  

Some marketing approaches to personnel have been applied in recent years. In their book “Raising the profile: Marketing the HR function” David Clutterbuck and Desmond Dearlove aurgued that the function’s services should be professionally marketed within the organisation. And the Workspeak consultancy applies marketing principles to recruitment, such as accurate segmentation of the labour market. But whilst these variants show that there is interest in marketing, neither apply marketing as a model for the full spectrum of personnel services.

The power of marketing as a general model for personnel is that it does not assume there is one way to strategic success. It is a “meta-model” that can be used to develop the right kind of employment products for a particular organisation to achieve its business objectives. Many of the bandwagon techniques that have dominated the personnel literature to date assume a bogus universality. To use “the new psychological contract” as an example, it assumes that all organisations used to offer lifetime careers (untrue), that all organisations are now unable to offer such careers (also untrue), and that employees are ready to renegotiate their career expectations (doubtful). If personnel applied the analytical approach of marketing, and the idea of the segmentation of the market, such generalisations would soon collapse.  

For examples of the disillusionment with management and HR bandwagons, you need look no further than the 2 May issue of People Management. Almost juxta-positioned were an autopsy on re-engineering, Binna Kandola’s counsel that competencies do not suit all organisations, and a brave confessional piece on “best practice” going wrong (self-directed learning at Price Waterhouse).

HR theorists can do no more than preach that we should always take organisational culture and climate into account. Marketing gives you the tools to measure the expectations of your workforce, and to test whether your proposed innovations would meet them. Formal market research techniques such as surveys and focus groups, can supplement our informal knowledge of the workforce’s needs and aspirations.

Our function’s creditability is determined by the hit rate of interventions that are judged to be successful by our client organisation. Whenever you feel that a programme or project is hampered by unenlightened managers, and ignored by their ungrateful subordinates, stop! You are trying to push a product that they do not want.  A marketing approach does not mean finding some way of jazzing it up to sell it harder. It means you should find out what the client wants, and respond to that. When trying to integrate HR into business strategy, focus on what line management see as the main business issues. Asking the board to tack on HR’s pet concerns to a business strategy does not guarantee integration.   

Product differentiation, a key concept of marketing, gives another insight as to why bandwagon techniques are no salvation. This is the introduction of different features into products to satisfy various segments of the market. Some personnel theories have verged on saying that if we all adopt a particular cluster of techniques, we shall all be strategic. Remember HRM? That came close to saying that if you had performance management, flexible benefits and individual contracts you were strategic. If you didn’t, you weren’t.

But the breakthrough by which personnel becomes valued as a strategic contributor to the business will only happen by doing different things. I shall do things consistent with where my company is positioned in the labour market. These may be very different from what you will do in your company, but we could both be equally professional at marketing our employment products. Competitor analysis reveals which features are “industry standard” and offered by all, and the scope for features that differentiate one company’s employment product from its competitors.

Another key concept in marketing is the “marketing mix”. This is the combination of product, price, place and promotion that best meets consumer needs. “Defining the product” is what the personnel practitioner does in identifying core and peripheral employment, devising career structures, and job analysis. “Pricing the product” is known in personnel jargon as compensation and benefits. We are “promoting the product” not only when we advertise for recruitment, but when we communicate to employees on any employment matters.  We have been marketing the employment product all the time without realising it.

Whilst a marketing approach is not difficult to learn, its adoption by the personnel profession requires some jettisoning of mental baggage. In addition to questioning our current concept of best practice, forget the platitude “people are our greatest asset”. Assets are passive entities that organisations control totally. They can end up being stripped, liquefied or frozen. Who wants to be an asset? Seeing employees and potential employees as “employment consumers” recognises their ability to choose a different supplier of employment.

Most personnel people will also have to re-evaluate their view of marketing as consisting only of persuasion through advertising. If you have not already done so, read an introductory textbook on marketing. At the very least it is useful business education – and it might provide inspiration.