HR leaders are honing their internal marketing skills, ensuring ROI
A flyer with details about the latest benefit offerings taped to the back of a bathroom stall door in the office just doesn’t cut it anymore.
HR teams have to market their benefits packages, a key piece to retaining employees. And it has to go beyond outlining these benefits over email, workplace experts say.
That’s where video content, engagement-boosting plays on social channels, and special campaigns come in, which stands to resonate significantly more in this digital media-first world when some companies are still remote or hybrid. A bulletin board in the breakroom doesn’t have the same amount of eyes on it that it used to.
We spoke with HR and benefit experts to better understand this evolution, including why HR administrators should start doing this if they aren’t already. When 80% of people are scared of their company’s HR department, these campaigns can go a long way.
“I need to have a financial skillset, a marketing skillset, a strategy skillset,” said Maggie Ruvoldt, CHRO of the national autism treatment center LEARNBehavioral. “I expect my internal leaders to similarly have that. The marketing piece is becoming increasingly important, particularly as we compete for employees’ time and attention with everything else going on in their lives.”
With a tight labor market, defining the employee value proposition has been more important than ever. Mike Clementi, former CHRO of Unilever who has been in the HR space for 30 years, describes that as showing “a day spent here is better than a day spent somewhere else.” But why? That’s where it’s up to HR to help their employees see the unique benefits offered, how it can impact them, and why it matters.
To do that, Clementi says it requires HR to listen before diving into developing marketing materials.
“One benefit is always listening,” said Clementi. “That means moving from an annual cycle which is long and backward-looking, to being always on and doing sentiment analysis. If you have a good pulse of what’s happening in the organization, you can generally have a good sense of what needs to be done.”
With any marketing strategy, you need to understand your audience. Ruvoldt says a good, simple question to ask “Who are my employees?”
Whatever benefit you are looking to promote, the vendor is likely able to help as well, especially when it comes to knowing your audience. Will Sealy, co-founder and CEO at the student loan benefits company Summer, says that they work with HR administrators to ensure that employees are navigating benefits in a way that is intuitive and maximizes employee engagement. For example, your audience might not always be your employees, but instead potential job candidates, if you are working on retention.
“We start at the basis of what problem are you trying to solve as an HR unit and then what problem are your employees trying to solve,” said Sealy. “We break that out to inform the strategy and the plan. If they’re trying to solve a recruiting problem … you are using our solution to attract people that don’t yet work for you. Now you have to think about who you are trying to recruit and why. That’s what a marketer is thinking about.”
Sealy says that for most HR people they work with, marketing is still not a well-honed muscle. “They’re focused on making sure something works, does what it says, and isn’t a disastrous experience,” said Sealy.
Internally, HR can have a sizeable impact on ensuring people are adopting these programs.
“For HR leaders, create the opportunity for your team to think about these things in different ways,” said Ruvoldt. “It’s delightful to see them get excited about this. People can think about their roles as very transactional, but the idea you can put some creativity into it is exciting.”
For example, Ruvoldt’s HR department created personas for the different kinds of employees they have so that they can market to them accordingly — something she wasn’t asked to do directly, but realized it could help in their initiatives.
Then, it’s about navigating the employee experience so that they can interact in a way they might not have before. For example, Clementi says that he’s seeing more use of generative AI chatbots. When someone opens up their laptop in the morning, they might have a simple message that tells them more about a new company-wide initiative or benefits package.
He’s also seen an increase in communication from the top to everyone. “There are frequent town halls, video messaging from the president or a functional leader right to the team, more Zoom meetings with updates,” said Clementi.
Ruvoldt too has seen participation increase when communication is coming from key stakeholders. For example, they found that people didn’t read emails as frequently unless it came from the CEO. That’s why they tout benefit programs in the emails from the CEO in a “Did you know” section.
Other times, it means meeting people where they are in the moment. So while a flyer in the breakroom might seem outdated, a QR code with more information has grabbed people’s attention. Or, it might mean ensuring vendors are at the company benefits fair. Sealy said that 60 employees of one of their clients signed up for their benefit when they attended a benefits fair. Those are people who missed webinars and emails, but came in person. “Showing up can make the difference,” said Sealy.
Whatever way an HR function chooses to go about it, internal marketing campaigns are crucial, especially at a time when leaders need to continue to fight for a budget.
“The benefits pie never gets any bigger, it’s about how I slice it up,” said Ruvoldt. “The C-suite doesn’t wake up in the morning and say ‘we should spend more money on benefits.’ If they’re not going to have a recruitment or retention ROI, it’s hard for me to justify a point solution.”
Without participation, some benefits might be paused or canceled entirely.
“Think about it with an ROI lens, saying ‘I’ve invested X dollars for a program, and I need a Y return, how do I maximize that return by getting it the most exposure possible and the most employees to enroll?” said Clementi. “This is more important than ever.”
For the HR professional who is hoping to grow their own marketing skills, Ruvoldt suggests learning the basics. One big piece of advice? “Don’t look up marketing skills for HR people, just look for marketing,” said Ruvoldt.