How Strategic Human Resource Communications Influence Hiring Practice

Cynthia Trivel la

How Strategic Human Resource Communications

Inf luence Hir ing Practice

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How Strategic Human Resource Communications Influence Hiring Practice 3

Executive Summary

Human Resource Communications is a relatively new title given to the area of Human Resources that focuses on the marketing and public relations behind three main areas: 1) Recruitment; 2) Retention, and; 3) Employer Branding. For the sake of clarity, HR Communications is also known by the titles, HR Marketing Communications, Employee Communications, Recruitment Advertising, and sometimes but less so, by the title Internal Communications.

Human Resource Communications, once known exclusively as recruitment advertising, has changed tremendously within the past 15 years. Though not a new agency or corporate function, over the past few decades, it has revolutionized how companies acquire, train and retain their employees. Once believed to be a hiring vehicle exclusively, HR Communications is now believed to be the change agent behind why highly talented people and great companies are more closely aligned with similar beliefs, goals, and values. This alignment is more commonly known as engagement, which will be further discussed in this chapter.

One of the most contemporary goals of Human Resource Communications is understanding the importance of data and metrics (or analytics.) Having sufficient and telling data requires tracking and then ultimately analyzing the metrics found in the results. The analyzed data can be used for determining successes, failures, trends, demographics and geographics. From this information, Human Resource Communications can be better directed with messages that are more pertinent to the target audience(s) and ultimately reaching those individuals more suited for the culture of an organization. Analytics can be produced in many forms depending on the objective or goal of what is trying to be understood and achieved, and its impact will be discussed in various scenarios throughout this chapter.

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From a Reactive Function to a Proactive Strategy

Twenty plus years ago, HR Communications was exclusively a reactive function and in relation to the times, was referred to as recruitment advertising. When recruitment advertising was called into play, it was generally under the guise of a more reactive and immediate needs pretense. It required the recruitment advertising professional to quickly look up media options, assess cost for the advertising and insure that the job advertisement was placed with the media before the publication’s, often times, strict deadlines. Though being reactive to the need for publicizing job openings is still a thriving and often sought-after option, it has evolved into a secondary function under the umbrella of a proactive and strategic approach for reaching qualified talent to fill positions within an organization.

A deeper understanding of an organization’s business objectives needs to be considered when determining how that organization should recruit, retain and more importantly, how the employment value proposition (EVP) around why highly talented people would want to work for that organization should be positioned. What once was an “order taker” function is now a strategic partnership with human resources, marketing, communications, and critical other departments which are stakeholders in the acquisition and retention of an organization’s workforce.

For the sake of this explanation, I will comment on the HR Communications role from the perspective of an agency consultant. My 15+ years of consulting experience has provided me opportunities to work with small start-ups, as well as International Fortune 500 corporations. This perspective has given me an inside view of how various companies function, how each has valued their EVP, what weight they place on employee retention, how much interaction they have with their employee base and if they respect and covet the opinions of their employees, to what extent the Human


Resources department is involved with the business objectives of the organization and included in the group of leaders who set policy and set organization business goals, and what I have found to be critical for a strategic HR Communications approach to be implemented: how business savvy are the heads of Human Resources in understanding their organization’s business objectives and how the role of the HR department will impact the success of the organization based on the individuals hired, trained and retained.

Critical Steps

Listed below are six steps toward achieving a high-quality comprehensive HR communications strategy.

Discovery

As the first step in the process to a better developed HR Communications strategy, DISCOVERY is simply the conversations and inquiries that go into a deeper understanding of the organization’s business, culture, workforce practices, mission-vision-values-spirit, level of employee engagement and satisfaction, community stewardship, and most importantly, the desire to recognize that opportunities for change are needed to sustain the company and move it forward to face the demands of an ever-changing workforce in the present and for the future.

Discovery can be different things to different organizations. It’s generally the moment when the reality of knowing change is needed but exactly what change can be the unknown entity.

Some suggested considerations will be:

a) Deciding on the type of survey to use (i.e., employee engagement, employee satisfaction, employer improvement, employee development)

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b) Who will administrate the survey? The recommended procedure is to have an outside (disinterested 3rd party) vendor administrate.

c) Deciding on the appropriate and most probing questions to gain the intelligence. Will the survey be closed-ended questions, short answer or a combination of both? The choice can potentially impact the speed at which the data can be prepared.

d) Who will receive the survey? All employees, particular departments or locations?

e) How do we pre-announce the launch of the survey?

Understanding Survey Data

Without the proper tool(s) in place to collect, aggregate and analyze the data, the survey will be a waste of time.

Some considerations will be:

a) How do you want the data presented? Graphs, charts, paragraph format?

b) Now you have the data, what will you ultimately do with it?

c) When do you plan to share the findings with the survey takers and what information will be made public to them?

d) Are you prepared to take action on the results?

e) Will the call-to-action require executive buy-in to execute a plan? Hiring manager buy-in?

f) Will the data help to connect the dots so we can form a picture?


Messaging/What Do You Say?

At this point in the process, you should already understand what the plan-of-action is going to be and now you need to start composing the verbiage to make your plan fly. This requires you to have a summary of data findings that paints a picture and will point you in the direction of what needs to be addressed. For example, if employee empowerment has been determined to be a point of contention, based off of the survey data that was collected, then a potential solution to address this issue may be to provide employees with additional training to give them the confidence to understand what is well within their control to implement and what is not. Another option may be to create internal taskforce committees that can bring people together from different departments where they can create and propose suggested solutions that can help employees to feel more empowered.

Some considerations will be:

a) What type of campaign or initiative should we create, as this will impact how the messages are crafted?

b) Will it be appropriate for everyone within the organization?

c) Do we have affinity groups that will need a different communication?

d) How do we create excitement around the messaging?

e) How many message styles will be needed?

f) Will the messages for internal audiences be different from the external audiences?

g) Will external audiences be included?

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h) How will we incorporate the information into a format from which we can extract the details that explain our employment value proposition?

i) Will it address the areas of opportunity found in the survey results?

Marketing/Vehicles

Proper selection of the marketing vehicles will be critical in driving the messages to the appropriate audiences within the organization, as well as any external audiences. Considerations to consider are: budgets, timelines, audience reach, venue selections, and people resources to manage the marketing goals.

Some options to consider will be:

a) Will the selected platforms be able to support the messages?

b) Which platform should be considered first?

c) Are there platforms that should be avoided?

d) Which platforms currently in use get the most views or have shown the best traffic analytics?

e) Which venues should be considered for externalizing the messages vs. internal (company) use?

f) Do we understand who our external audience is and more importantly how they want to receive information from us?

g) Should the marketing be rolled out in phases?

h) What is the lifespan of the marketing campaign/ program/initiative?


Measuring/Monitoring

This step is at the heart of understanding what is happening with your initiative/campaign. Without putting goals in place to determine what will be considered success or failure, your actions will not have a meaningful impact on your objective(s).

What you need to understand:

a) Have the desired results been defined so success or failure can be identified?

b) Is the monitoring method flexible and open to change?

c) What metrics will be reviewed and evaluated?

d) How will we track our results? Manually? Automated system?

e) Who will be responsible for tracking the metrics and reporting the results?

f) How much time will be needed to monitor and track the metrics?

g) Are you prepared to defend the metrics to executive leadership?

Revamping

This step is important as it will allow you to revisit the initiative (program) and alter your approach to better serve the desired results. This can be done successfully, but the caveat is that the program itself is flexible to withstand minor tweaks without completely adulterating the measuring standards. For example, you may have defined a particular metric as important, but once you observed the initiative in process, discovered that it didn’t hold the relevancy you originally thought it would, so you have replaced it with a more important metric.

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Points to consider:

a) If needed, how often should we tweak the initiative?

b) Have any outliers been identified that will aid or prevent us from revamping?

c) Does the program/initiative lend itself to being changed without altering the goal?

d) Will there be additional/unforeseen expenses associated with revamping the program/initiative/ metric data collection?

e) Do we have a Plan B and C in place as a backup to the original program / initiative?

Five Frequently Asked Questions about HR Communications

How do you know that being strategic will work?

By using supportive documentation such as: case studies, relative industry information, competitive intelligence and analytics, HR can better understand what has and has not been done successfully. Being strategic does not mean implementing a plan and leaving it to its own devices. It means having a deeper engagement with your understanding of the organization’s business objectives and knowing what areas of responsibility will ultimately belong to the HR department in the overall goals. Being strategic gives you more control of the outcome because you are steering the direction of the HR Communications in such a way that the needs assessment will be answered.

Will being strategic be more cost effective?

Absolutely! Being strategic can accomplish a few things. For one, it allows you to plan based on documentation that will support the goals of the HR Communications plan. Secondly, it can make


budget dollars stretch further by accomplishing more with less, as well as economize a large budget that can accommodate additional features that were once thought of as unobtainable. By monitoring and measuring the communications strategy at various intervals, changes can be made to correct any under-performing initiatives, as well as augment the strategy with additional plans to supplement the existing plan. The goal is to provide opportunities to improve and increase the likelihood of an excellent ROI or better yet ROE: Return on Experience. The size of the budget is not as important as much as what is being done with the budget. Being able to optimize every dollar should be the focus.

If we take a strategic posture, can we still have room to include any immediate needs on a reactive basis?

Definitely. Through years of experience and interaction with my clients, I neither ask them, nor do I want them to resist or eliminate reactive needs. As I explain to them, being nimble is all part of being reactive-ready and trying to ignore this will not be a possibility for one very good reason: inevitably, circumstances will arise that cannot be ignored or were not expected to happen. One very good example of this is when a pharmaceutical client, from many years ago, had not integrated the possibility of a new drug getting FDA approval for distribution. When it did, HR was totally unprepared to pivot quickly. However, being able to capitalize on the experiences of being faced with a similar situation with another client from years previous, I was able to prepare a reactive plan to implement a recruiting strategy for pharmaceutical reps that could be turned around in the necessary timeframe and satisfied the acquisition needs to get the proper talent on-boarded and trained to begin marketing the new drug.

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We want to increase our application rate. How do we attract the right talent for our organization?

To start, the first question is: Do you like your career site? If not, you are missing an opportunity here. Without a doubt, we live in a digital age. A career site (sometimes referred to as a portal) is the epicenter of the candidate experience and where an organization can boldly place effective messages as part of the strategic communications plan. When considering an organization’s career site and what it offers to a job seeker, certain aspects of this must be evaluated. Is your site reflective of the organization’s culture? Is the story of the organization well told and accurate in keeping with the mission, vision and values? Is navigation intuitive? Are you providing enough information to engage job seekers and are they the right individuals for your organization? Do you understand who the right talent is for your company? Are job seekers able to easily find your career site? Do you give them a compelling reason to want to know more about you as an employer and why they want to work here?

In regards to understanding who is the right talent, companies need to turn to the best source of this information: their employees. These are the individuals who occupy the environment and help shape the culture. Human Resources and the leadership team within an organization need to understand how the organization is viewed and regarded by the employee population. So I would ask, do you conduct engagement surveys and if so, how do you analyze and use the data? When data is ignored and results not reported back to employees it actually creates a counter-productive effect that harbors negativity and resentment amongst employees. So the key here is simply understanding the viewpoint of the employee population by engaging them with surveys that value their opinions and suggestions and when possible, using this information in a constructive manner for improving the work environment and for attracting individuals who would be desirable candidates and cultural fits.


Employment branding is the underlying or foundational strategic communication upon which all other HR communications are built. A well-developed employment brand will reveal the employment value proposition (EVP) and has the power to set one employer apart from others within an industry as an employer-of-choice. An employment brand is a unique story to each organization and no two employment brands are ever alike because the EVP is germane and specific to each organization’s mission, vision, values, spirit, culture, habits, consumer and employer reputation, employee base, product/service, consumers, leadership and stakeholders. Organizations that recognize the importance of a well-defined employment brand are generally the companies which have a thriving HR Communications strategy in place and understand the positive it can have for recruitment and retention, along with improving their organization’s financial performance.

How do we leverage social media as part of our HR Communications strategy?

Social media is a hot topic for employers and just about anyone who’s online today. In the business environment, social media takes on a different meaning from how we use social media in our personal lives. One of the first areas to consider is the company’s industry. If the organization is a governmental organization or one where high-security is required, there will be some technological issues to be considered. Another area for consideration is determining what goals need to be achieved by incorporating social media into the HR Communications strategy. HR Communications, or any communications for that matter, that doesn’t have a defined purpose and achievable goals, will most likely fail. So as with any HR Communications strategy, conducting due diligence and research on the backend to determine if the organization and culture can support the use of social media should be one of the first considerations.

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When clients tell me that their competition is using social media and they want to as well, I always ask, for what reason and to what end. Upfront, I gain understanding by asking a series of questions and establishing their level of commitment to wanting to do this. If they don’t have a social media usage policy in place, they need to get one. They need to better understand which social media vehicle/s is/are the best for their purposes and will help them to reach their goals faster and with more effectiveness. They need to decide who will spearhead the HR Communications distributed via social media and of course crafting the appropriate messages, terms of frequency, management of negative public commentary, ability and familiarity of use with social media for the individual(s) responsible for being “the social face” of the organization, to name a but a few of the considerations.

From a higher level perspective, being able to set attainable goals and knowing how and when to adjust the HR Communications along with being able to identify what will be considered a success or a dismal failure will certainly help drive the program and most likely determine if the motivation and goals were in alignment with the organization’s business objectives. (SaS, Five Best Practices for Social Media Measurement: How to link social media metrics to business results)

Case Studies: Strategic HR Communications

Career site development as part of the HR Communications strategy

How you use the strategy in this case: As mentioned previously in this chapter, the career site is one of the most important starting points for any company to attract A-level talent. A well-developed career site is monumental for reaching qualified candidates and for representing an organization as an employer-of-choice.


When considering a healthcare client I worked with years ago, I know how important their career site was for them. The organization I am referencing is a prominent healthcare provider on the East Coast. At the time I worked with them, one of the biggest initiatives underway for them was achieving Magnet status. For those who aren’t familiar with Magnet status, this designation is bestowed upon healthcare providers which excel at nursing excellence in various areas such as employee retention and satisfaction, professional development, inter-departmental collaboration and patient care. This designation is the gold standard for defining the employee culture, specifically for nursing, and is neither an easy nor quick undertaking.

To help them to reach their goal of achieving magnet status, I was asked to consult with them on their HR Communications strategy. The first place I touched upon was their career site. It was what I referred to as “basic” which translated into uninteresting and ineffective at rendering their EVP.

Career site development is not an overnight process. It generally involves many conversations with the appropriate stakeholders, a discovery process to gain understanding of the organizations culture (in this case it included focus groups, interviews and engagement surveys), a timeline to illustrate the steps in the process, identifying who will be responsible for feedback and or approval for each step, and even understanding the marketing standards established by the organization so as to insure the business/consumer side of the website complement and coordinate with the employment portal pages and capture the sweet spot where common attributes are shared.

After six months of preparation, multiple conversations, re-writes on the messaging, graphic design development, implementation of an applicant tracking system (ATS), technical input, and testing, their career site was launched. Based on the analytics (see following graph) we garnered from the traffic, “stickiness” or engagement of the

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career pages, increased applications and hires from the desired target audience, and feedback from the client on what they were hearing from their employee and applicant population, they credited the career site as the driving force behind the improvement in candidate quality and efficiency in their nursing recruitment initiative.

Career site development is not an overnight process. It generally involves many conversations with the appropriate stakeholders, a discovery process to gain understanding of the organizations culture (in this case it included focus groups, interviews and engagement surveys), a timeline to illustrate the steps in the process, identifying who will be responsible for feedback and or approval for each step, and even understanding the marketing standards established by the organization so as to insure the business/consumer side of the website complement and coordinate with the employment portal pages and capture the sweet spot where common attributes are shared. After six months of preparation, multiple conversations, re-writes on the messaging, graphic design development, implementation of an applicant tracking system (ATS), technical input, and testing, their career site was launched. Based on the analytics (see following graph) we garnered from the traffic, “stickiness” or engagement of the career pages, increased applications and hires from the desired target audience, and feedback from the client on what they were hearing from their employee and applicant population, they credited the career site as the driving force behind the improvement in candidate quality and efficiency in their nursing recruitment initiative.

The most wonderful aspect of this project was that we helped a client to reach an over-arching business objective that impacted the entire healthcare system. This was most certainly an instance where the HR Communications strategy took on a

Total Visitors

Unique Visitors

Average Time Spent

Career Site & Mobile Site


The most wonderful aspect of this project was that we helped a client to reach an over-arching business objective that impacted the entire healthcare system. This was most certainly an instance where the HR Communications strategy took on a much bigger role and positioned the client as an employer-of-choice within their industry and community.

Incorporating employee referrals into an HR Communications strategy in a high-turnover industry

This is one of the hottest topics I have seen impact the use of HR Communications. Employee referrals are cited by thousands of companies as the number one way to recruit and to retain A-level talent.

One company I want to discuss, here, had a very weak employee referral program in place which had not been revamped or refreshed for over 3 years. Given the propensity for turnover in their industry I was a bit surprised. The organization is a national retailer with revenue well into the billions annually. Overall, the company has a great reputation and brand recognition is not a problem from the consumer side of business. As is common within certain industries, turnover can be statistically higher in some industries versus others. Unfortunately retail is one of industries where turnover is historically high. (BLS Employee Turnover Rates For Year Ending August, 2006 - Released October 11, 2006)

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For the most part, this organization relied on using very traditional methods for recruiting which is often times referred to as the “post and pray” method of recruiting found when using job boards to advertise job openings. I refer to it as the gathering method (attracting job applicants to find posted positions and apply) vs. the hunter method which uses talent sourcing and passive candidate techniques. Upon further discovery with this company, it was determined they were not happy with their current recruiting method, but were not sure how to go about finding a more effective way.

To start, a complete evaluation of their job board performance was necessary to discover the areas that may be falling short on performance. Based on the analysis, the job boards were actually performing quite well and the basic performance indicators (views, clicks and applies) were high. During the discussion around these observations, it quickly became apparent that the candidate flow was good but the candidate quality was not. This organization conducted regular engagement surveys and had identified the qualities from the high-performing individuals within the company, so the profiles of the people they wanted to hire for their stores was already in place. What was of high interest to me was how these rock star employees came to find this employer and what is it that keeps them engaged to want to stay.

After many phone interviews about how and why these high-performing employees came to find this employer, three responses were consistently cited: They were referred to the organization by a current employee, someone they knew who had a good customer experience and thought the retailer would be a good fit for them as an employer, or through their own customer experience with a store representative who engaged them in conversation around employment opportunities.


With responses in hand, the information was presented and what was further revealed is that a viable system for gauging the success or failure of the employee referral program was outdated and no longer being maintained due to the departure of the person originally charged with overseeing it. As stated by Dr. John Sullivan, a noted authority on all that is Human Resources, “Newly launched ERPs become stale and outdated within months of launching, their performance rising, leveling, and dropping off until someone steps up and once again opts to retool the program.” (ERE.net, June 21, 2010)

What I gleaned from this was 1) employees do refer people to their organization regardless of remuneration being offered or not, as evidenced by the employees who were continuing to refer people; 2) the rock star employees I interviewed had all been employee or customer referrals; 3) tracking and monitoring any HR Communications program, regardless of it being internal or external is critical to understanding the efficacy of the program.

Needless to say, this retailer heeded the data and immediately took steps to revamp their ERP and place a viable system in place to track the numbers. Today they are enjoying a healthy and better ROI on their investment in this program with a 33% referral-to-hire rate.

The financial effects of employee satisfaction and retention

How you use the strategy in this case: It is no secret that a happy workforce is going to be more engaged and subsequently more productive. But what are the ways in which employee happiness has a direct impact on an organization’s bottom line? This is a question HR professionals have been addressing for many years and a question that has risen to the surface as companies have been called upon to do more and better with less.

Fewer upgrades to technology, fewer individuals to complete the necessary work and less money to spend to conduct business: these

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issues have led organizations to re-examine practices and work systems once thought to be effective in the past.

When considering cost-per-hire vs. cost to retain, companies need to consider some mitigating factors. What does it cost to hire, on-board, train and sustain our new employees versus what is our cost to retain, train and sustain our current workforce? So looking at factors like engagement, saturation into the culture, interesting and challenging work duties, continuing education, leadership communication, brand ambassadorship which all have a correlation to time-to-productivity and customer satisfaction, should help drive the aforementioned question on employee happiness and the bottom line to a decision of financial understanding. Understanding this makes hiring and retention a much more impactful business decision as opposed to a “feeling” or knee-jerk reaction to managing an organization’s hiring and retention practices.

As illustrated in the diagram below, researchers describe, in what they call the “Service-Profit Chain,” effects of how employee retention and satisfaction develop through the workforce pipeline which leads to customer loyalty and ultimately hits an organization’s bottom line with profitability. (Harvard Business Review, July 2008)

Additionally as described in this article, the researchers clearly state that this workforce model is only successful when driven by leadership acceptance and support. This leads me to a scenario where one such company experienced this very model, but not until consequences were felt and a decision to upend a sinking ship was made. A few years ago, a very large North American organization sitting in the call center industry contacted me to assist them with instituting an employee referral program (ERP). Given what is known about the extreme turnover in this industry, their decision to incorporate an ERP made total sense. Upon meeting with the HR professionals at this organization and conducting the preliminary discovery into their business, recruiting goals, objectives for hiring, target audience, timelines for meeting the goals and expectations of my role, it became apparently clear that they were not only suffering from extreme turnover(52%) by their call center representatives (call center industry average is 26% for full-time employees and 33% for part-time as cited in the U.S. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook 2010-2011), they were also experiencing low productivity and receiving poor customer service reviews. In addition, the hiring (middle management) managers were being pummeled by senior leadership to increase low productivity and to up the scores on their customer service reviews. My contacts in Human Resources explained that they had meetings with the hiring managers to discuss the low productivity problem and each direct report


Additionally as described in this article, the researchers clearly state that this workforce model is only successful when driven by leadership acceptance and support.

This leads me to a scenario where one such company experienced this very model, but not until consequences were felt and a decision to upend a sinking ship was made.

A few years ago, a very large North American organization sitting in the call center industry contacted me to assist them with instituting an employee referral program (ERP). Given what is known about the extreme turnover in this industry, their decision to incorporate an ERP made total sense.

Upon meeting with the HR professionals at this organization and conducting the preliminary discovery into their business, recruiting goals, objectives for hiring, target audience, timelines for meeting the goals and expectations of my role, it became apparently clear that they were not only suffering from extreme turnover(52%) by their call center representatives (call center industry average is 26% for full-time employees and 33% for part-time as cited in the U.S. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook 2010-2011), they were also experiencing low productivity and receiving poor customer service reviews. In addition, the hiring (middle management) managers were being pummeled by senior leadership to increase low productivity and to up the scores on their customer service reviews. My contacts in Human Resources explained that they had meetings with the hiring managers to discuss the low productivity problem and each direct report of these managers was discussed at length to identify who were the low, average and high performers. This was certainly a good start, but not the solution to the problem they were facing.

The decision to conduct an employee engagement survey was made, the questions designed and the distribution swift. The

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information culled from the survey summary revealed what we had been expecting: low employee morale due to high turnover, lack of advancement opportunities, high-pressure work coupled with daily quotas, conversations with disgruntled customers, lack of processes to promote two-way communication between the call center representatives and leadership, non-existent recognition to the high performers, and lack of training were some of the major problems that were discovered from the survey results, but the problems this organization were facing were even bigger. They had lost a very large client and were on the verge of losing another. Their revenue model could not sustain two substantial client loses in the same year. There were different problems to solve here but it all came down to this realization: until they fixed the fractured relationship with their call center representatives, their business was going to continue to suffer financially. Now that we knew for certain what we were up against, we began developing the improvement plan. The plan was created with these steps steering the strategy:

1) Leadership buy-in

a) funding and support to begin corrective measures needed approval from Sr. Leadership

b) supporting materials such as cost-to-hire (ANSI/SHRM 06001.2012), case studies, white papers, and the survey summary were used to defend taking the position that to retain employees and reduce turnover was going to positively impact morale, which in turn would increase productivity and ultimately revenue and profitability

2) Middle management buy-in

a) essential to support and promote the programs and initiatives, as they will be key in driving them

3) Needed discoveries and development of internal programs to correct productivity deficiencies in the call center


a) create process for two-way communication between the call center and management – a taskforce was developed with managers and identified call center representatives to discuss areas for improvement

b) developed online training programs to extend the call center knowledge base and increase confidence when handling customer service calls (the online training was mandatory, but upon completion, the representatives were granted the empowerment needed to better manage customer inquiries and complaints.)

c) re-evaluate the daily quota of customer calls to assess the effectiveness of time-per call [one recurring comment from the survey was that the daily quota forced the representatives to rush customers off the phone, leaving the customer unsatisfied with the level of engagement (comments taken from customer feedback)]

d) develop re-engagement program that provided continual feedback and (informal) evaluation of performance (note: the annual (formal) appraisal process remained in place)

e) develop a two-way recognition program that allowed peers and management to acknowledge performance

f) develop modified on-boarding program for call center that engaged and encouraged (autonomous) feedback

g) begin to promote creation of employee referral program through various communications vehicles (i.e., intranet, flyers, emails) to initiate excitement

4) Develop the external programs to attract the desired individuals for the call center representative positions

a) employee referral

b) appropriate media vehicles

c) enhanced career site to increase interest and engagement

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5) Develop and incorporate an on-boarding program for new employees

a) started with engagement during application process and initial interviews

b) followed employees for first three years of employment

6) Sr. leadership to hold town hall meeting(s) with call center representatives to announce changes, programs and initiatives to forge deeper engagement with call center employees

7) Begin to launch programs as developed and provide ample communications to all call center representatives

8) Monitor effectiveness of all programs every 90 days and retool the plan as needed

The amount of communications work that was developed and implemented was, indeed, a lot of work. The results, however, were well worth the amount of work put into the plan.

Within six months of beginning the new programs, turnover had dropped from the staggering 52% down to 41% and though still high, the needle was moving in the right direction. At the 12-month mark, another employee engagement survey was distributed which produced significantly different results as compared to the survey conducted during the initial discovery process. Call center employees reported feeling more competent to handle customer complaints and calls. Along with this, the amount of time required for each call had also dropped, so being able to sufficiently hit daily call goals was a more manageable duty. (Note: reassessing daily call goals were re-evaluated and based on feedback obtained during the taskforce meetings, an agreed upon number was approved by both management and call center representatives.)


Referrals for jobs were growing and with that employees were being rewarded and recognized for their contributions. In addition, call center employees who excelled at providing superior customer service, were recognized with an employee of the month, of the quarter and annual awards to support their dedication to customer service excellence. The call center representatives were also able to recognize management for their contributions and endorse them for recognition and rewards.

Client satisfaction surveys were redesigned and distributed at the six month mark. The client survey redesign allowed the company to ask specific questions about the client’s interaction with the call center representatives and to provide as much detailed information as they felt comfortable doing. Increased satisfaction was on the rise! In fact, one client’s satisfaction led them to refer another company to this call center as a solid service provider and gave my client a ringing endorsement. Once this new client was on-boarded, ample recognition and small bonuses were gladly bestowed.

The one very interesting thing about this client’s situation is that although many challenges were presented in the initial engagement survey, money was never noted as a problem. In actuality, the client paid quite well; better than the call center across town and the one two towns away. This speaks fathoms about what employees really want from their employer and that it isn’t all about the money.

Hurdles to Overcome

There are many hurdles which hasten the expansion and development of the HR Communications function. For one, Human Resources as a department is still struggling to find a place in the business world. The stigma placed on this department has historically been one where this is the department that employees go to as a solution

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provider to problems. This said, I do believe that the word “human” is a function of this department. Human Resources when running as a business department within an organization should stand on a reputation where value, business contributions and people resources should be a constant function. This does not mean that HR serves as the “psychiatrist’s couch,” but does mean that if and when needed information and guidance can be provided in a business manner to help uphold the needs of the individual and support the leadership within the organization. Many HR departments still struggle with not having a voice in the business decisions, not being included in the leadership meetings, not having ownership of the career portal which serves as the all-important epicenter of the job candidate experience. I, also, see many of them fighting for every last dollar of budget needed for building out a great experience for on-boarding and training, for example. As a general statement, HR needs to work harder to earn the respect they deserve and I see this as an opportunity for HR departments to show their business worth by understanding the objectives and goals of their company, then being able to translate this understanding into a business case for recruiting, retention and the need for a well-developed employment brand loaded with lots of supporting data to better position their contributions.

To assist my HR partners, I work to provide them with data, metrics/analytics, case studies, financial justification, information on industry best practices, and relative demographic information to help them build the business case for why strategic HR Communications should be a gun in their arsenal.


About Cynthia TrivellaCyndy began her career in advertising and Human Resource Marketing Communications on Madison Avenue in New York City over 15 years ago. Prior to that, she worked in corporate human resources as a recruiter and as a training and development coordinator. In addition, Cyndy has multiple years of media planning, employment branding and human resource communications strategy experience at a management level from both the media and agency sides. She has managed the human resource communications function for many clients including: The IRS, Applebee’s, Merrill Lynch, GE Capital, Corning, Colgate Palmolive, Burns & McDonnell, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Lowe’s, LensCrafters, and Home Depot.

Cyndy is a guest writer on ERE.net, Workbbble.com and HRMargo.com where she writes about topics of high-interest to the human resources industry. In addition, she has published articles on the principles of proper structure and integration of corporate internships, which has been incorporated into the entrepreneurship curriculum at a local Kansas City college. She has contributed articles to the Kansas City Small Business Journal on best practices in human resources with one of the articles being cited as a “2011 Best of Best.” Cyndy maintains a strong presence in the digital space and has been awarded the distinction of being named to the list, “Top 25 Online Influencers in Recruiting” and “HR Marketer Top 25 Digital Media Influencers.” Cyndy, also, serves as a board director for two Kansas City-based organizations and is an HR standards taskforce member for the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, VA.

She currently resides in the Greater Kansas City area as the director and branch manager for NAS Recruitment Communications and was awarded the title of NAS Recruitment Communications 2011 Director of the Year.

Cyndy holds a BA in psychology and mass communications from Westfield State College in Massachusetts.

You can connect with Cyndy:

www.twitter.com/CyndyTrivella www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiatrivella www.facebook.com/ctrivella

Documents

How Strategic Human Resource Communications Influence Hiring Practice