Employee Marketing Improves Work Culture
Maybe one of the most worthwhile classes that a Human Resource professional can take is marketing. Certainly effective communication skills are core competencies for HR professionals. We communicate policy and procedure, vision and values as well as positive reinforcement throughout the organization. But, do we take enough advantage of marketing or influencing techniques in our communication?
Yes, I am talking about deliberately choosing words in order to influence employee attitudes. Wait, before you get concerned about manipulation and coercion think about the power of a properly placed legitimate adjective.
For example, if your benefit package is competitive, communicate about your benefit package using this adjective. When your employees hear this they validate it and when it’s validated, you get positive morale boost. If you offer work/life initiatives for employees, use the words “family friendly” as adjectives for work environment. Over time your employees internalize this and begin to describe your work environment to others as family friendly. If you apply HR policies fairly across your organization, use “fair and consistent” as the adjective. You know what will happen and how employees will feel about your HR policies – they will internalize them as fair and feel good about them and you.
Deliberately find ways to use legitimate adjectives to describe key elements of your work environment, pay and benefits and you will see attitudes towards these things change and become more positive. The key to the power of this employee marketing techniques is whether employees can validate what you are promoting. Without validation, employee marketing can have serious backlash.
We can all use a little improvement in employee relations. Utilize the power of employee marketing technique and you will see improvement. Choosing key adjectives is one employee marketing tool that will positively impact your work culture and ultimately help your organization achieve competitive advantage.
Tim Nieboer
Sr. Consultant/Partner, Quantum Services, Inc., tim@qsiteam.com
MBA Adjunct Faculty: GVSU, Davenport University
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