I believe that HR and Marketing should be part of the same department. Marketing is about having conversations with the external world while HR is about having conversations with the internal world – aka employees. There is something lopsided about organizations. They will spend oodles of dollars trying to know about what the customers want, track their shifts, buy research on how their products compare to the competitors. Above all, a minor shift in consumer preferences will lead to long debates in the boardroom. Ever see the Internal Marketing department obsess about the needs, wants and aspirations of the internal customers? See, how you don’t react to that statement unless I say ever seen the average HR department obsess about tracking and studying employees with the same degree of meticulousness? Naah. It is just not in the DNA of organizations. It maybe the same behavior that prompts people to be more courteous and caring towards a potential partner than when that partner morphs into a spouse. Valentine’s Day is the one day that majority of husbands buy flowers for their wives. The other 364 days be damned.Until now I thought it is just Marketing and HR that should be merged. Now I am convinced that we need to bring CRM into the same department. I looked up the definition of CRM in Wikipedia.
“Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work together to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs.”
In a world filled with options, it is easy for consumers to flirt with different brands. The same happens when these very consumers who are spoilt for choice walk into the doors of their organizations looking for a choice of employers. In high growth economies like India and China, employees are flooded with alternatives – especially the highly skilled ones that you’d hate to lose. Employees behave like consumers. So treat them with the same sophistication and attention is my advice.Wouldn’t it be great if there were to be a CRM aimed purely at salvaging employee grievances? After all the reasons why attrition happens can be almost mapped to the seven reasons why customers leave. (more…)