Lessons from Marketing: seeing Talent as Customers

Viewing your key talent as you would consumers or customers makes for a smarter and more targeted approach to Talent Management.

Our article in HR Magazine  explored this.  We think that the scarcity of talent is forcing many HR teams to reconsider how they attract, engage and retain individuals with the skills they need. We see that the balance of power has shifted towards those who possess valuable skills - and away from those who need them. Consequently, talented employees are now adopting shorter-term, more transactional relationships with their employer.

Research by Henley Business School suggests that the way forward is to shift your mindset from thinking of employees as servants of your organisation, to thinking of talent as customers - and adopt some of those techniques that marketing departments use.

We offer five traditional marketing techniques that you can apply to your talent:

1. Identify your ‘audiences’ by pinpointing who your talented people are and engage with them as early as possible in their careers.
2. Uncover their needs. Find out what individuals want and what drives how they think about their careers. Talk to them about their career aspirations and their motivations.
3. Try to give them what they want. Different employees will be engaged by different things, depending on their expectations, working preferences, development needs and the relationship they want to have with you. So, your policies and benefits will need to be flexible.
4. If you lose them, win them back. If you can’t offer what your talent wants in the short- to medium-term, they’re probably going to leave. However, by joining another employer, they’ll inevitably gather new experience that could be valuable to your business in the future. So keep the door open for them to come back.
5. Make good use of analytics. Talent systems can help you to understand people’s capabilities, how they’re performing, their potential and exactly what will engage and motivate them. They also enable you to create ‘role profiles’ for specific jobs and explore multiple career paths.

We believe that those who adopt a marketing-led approach to talent management and treat their talent as customers, will hold a significant competitive advantage.

Read the full article and take a look at our cloud-based talent management software.

You may like to then talk to us about your specific challenges.