There are tons of benefits in collaborating Human Resources and the marketing leaders that includes higher productivity, effective execution and innovation. The world of work has undergone changes and yet most of us work in silos predominantly.  This has resulted in now employer branding as another critical strategy to address the future talent and the current shortages. It is observed that there are less than 20% companies having two or more department’s teams responsible for the employer brand management. Thus, it is apparent that there is a huge opportunity for HR leaders and marketing champions to collaborate and work on this crucial issue.

What to learn from each other

It is surprising that Marketing and HR does not collaborate often and now bureau de Sept 24 also points out this fact. Both areas are actually focused on motivating and influencing people. Thus, there is a need for both the disciplines to have exceptional understanding skills of psychology and people. Regardless of the commonalities, additional capabilities and skills can be learnt from each other and it may certainly have a positive impact eventually on the businesses.

To highlight a few that can be learnt by HR from marketing includes:

• Talent segmentation: There is a need for customer segmentation for the marketing professionals and the same for HR refers to segmenting employees and candidates. Developing targeted value propositions for each employee segment and then customizing the audience is a crucial employer branding strategy. Thus it is best to recruit people fit for diverse roles to suit different requirements.

• Embracing technology: There are many HR professionals who are tech savvy, yet the marketing professionals have an upper hand as they have easy access to the trends of latest technology and they easily engage their customers using this as their tool for communication. Now the same can be employed by HR by learning how to attract, engage and retain the talent.

To highlight a few to be learnt by marketing from HR includes:

• Influencing business strategy and behaviour: A marketer has a tangible product as the platform. But working with HR they will understand more about employee behaviour, engagement, challenges, and beliefs. HR handles the people and their values in an organization as a product. Learning this from HR will help marketers in contributing better.
• Placing people first: HR gives importance to people first that they concentrate on employee’s thoughts, behaviours, and communication. Marketing can learn from FR the ethos of the people and organization and this will result in spark innovation and positive impact.