The Importance of Marketing and HR Collaboration

Work and workplaces are changing at lightning speed. For organizations to operate efficiently to achieve success in today’s environment, it requires increased diligence and a willingness of business functions to collaborate. For instance, the overall aging of the population, organizations’ desire for the efficient and effective search for new customers, a rise in the use of technologies and artificial intelligence, variable return-to-the-office company policies and an increasingly competitive market for talent with in-demand skills is creating a greater need for marketing and human resources (HR) professionals to work together.

Marketing and HR are interdependent business functions that share similar goals, but for different audiences. Marketing is responsible for understanding and enforcing an organization’s brand and communicating it to customers to increase awareness, usage, loyalty and referrals. HR is responsible for understanding the needs and desires of an organization’s workforce, imposing employment branding and ensuring an organization is perceived positively by external candidates and internal staff who fulfill customer brand promises.

Your marketing team should work with your talent acquisition team to ensure they are bringing in talent that seeks to fulfill the organizational brand promise. HR can lean on marketing’s understanding of the unique components and needs of prospective audiences to bolster the hiring process with brand authenticity tied to your organization’s overall strategy.

According to LinkedIn’s report, The Future of Recruiting 2024, talent acquisition teams will need “new skills, new tools and agility to attract, hire and retain the best talent.” LinkedIn Research surveyed 1,951 recruiting professionals and hiring managers across 23 countries between October and November 2023. The research found that 49% of those surveyed say that employer branding will shape recruiting over the next five years, trailing only the need to measure the quality of hires (54%). In addition, employer branding is the recruitment function that’s expected to receive the greatest increase in spend with 57% of respondents predicting their investment in employer branding will increase in the coming year to match their authentic look and feel and the reality of what prospects find on employer review sites.

The Deloitte Insights 2024 Global Human Capital Trends survey of 14,000 business and human resources leaders across multiple industries and sectors in 95 countries identifies a mindset shift for HR — what Deloitte terms “boundaryless HR,” the adoption of a “different set of practices, skillsets, metrics, technologies and even structural changes.” The survey report emphasizes that “For many organizations, nothing is more important than its people … Human connections drive the majority of value for an organization, including revenues, innovation and intellectual property, efficiency, brand relevance, productivity adaptability, and risk.” Over 80% of executives surveyed said working with other disciplines to solve business problems, improve employee engagement, align HR practices to the overall business strategy and create brand ambassadors is increasingly performed across functional boundaries.

These research surveys highlight the importance of marketing and human resources professionals working together to build and maintain an employment brand.

Good employment branding can help an organization attract higher-quality candidates, making it easier to fill job openings. It can also boost employee morale, engagement and retention by highlighting points of pride and commonality for employees. Good employment branding can give customers a positive image of — and correct misperceptions about — an organization. This is why HR and marketing professionals should work together to ensure that all external marketing and branding — employment and customer — is consistent across all media channels.

Hear are four tangible ways that HR and marketing can work together to make your employment branding equal your customer branding.

• Onboarding – Create an employee onboarding program that is based on your organization’s mission, vision, values and brand promise to spread the right messaging and get buy-in from the start of every staff member’s employment journey.
• NIL (Name, image, likeness) – Don’t use stock photography for marketing materials. Highlight staff quotes, personality and likeness in messaging and imagery in all internal and external marketing communications.
• Brand ambassadors – Your organization’s story and people are the foundation for your employment brand, and employees can be the best brand ambassadors of your organization’s values. Aligning and communicating your brand message effectively throughout your organization supports marketing’s mission of sharing it with customers and HR’s mission of sharing it with talent prospects.
• Social media – Just as marketers leverage social media to reach customers, HR can utilize social channels to bolster talent acquisition. Build and foster a consistent and active social media presence and encourage staff to speak freely. Promote your organization and staff achievements and accomplishments to enhance the perception of your brand internally and externally, as well as reach and engage talent.

There should be no line between marketing and HR in collaborating to ensure your employment brand is strong, driving your culture and helping to attract top talent, and to ensure that employees are sending out the right brand message to your organization’s customers through their actions and words.