Spanning the void between ‘old HR' and ‘new HR'

The HR climate is changing, evolving, and growing increasingly competitive. For HR professionals, this means that responsibilities are changing, and changing fast. Suddenly, the domain of your department extends beyond administrative functions like tracking payroll and annual leave. Today, HR professionals need to align top talent with their organisation’s business objectives. This may sound relatively simple, but the problem that many of us typically face is that, unfortunately, people leave. All too often, the reason that people leave – whether they are poached by a rival organisation or simply decide to look elsewhere – is that they are not engaged in their work.

Watson Wyatt's 2006/2007 publication WorkAttitudes detailed the two key qualities which engage an employee in their work. First, an engaged employee will have a clear "line of sight" - they will see a promotion path planned out ahead of them and know that their efforts contribute towards the success of their organisation. Second, they will possess a personal commitment to their company that ensures they would resist better offers elsewhere.

A good line of sight and strong commitment are created by open communication. HR needs to communicate with every echelon of an organisation, from senior management down to entry level employees. This means that HR professionals often find themselves in the precarious position of balancing the organisational needs defined by senior management with the personal needs of employees. In such a situation, a little Public Relations can solve this communication challenge. It can serve as the bridge between your organisational commitments and your human commitments. It can certainly help to get buy-in from senior management on initiatives that will help make your talent pool strong, motivated, and committed. In short, it can help you keep your top talent and help your organisation meet its strategic goals.

The People Factor

The common core element critical to both HR and PR is people. Both HR and PR practitioners would be out of a job if there were no ‘people resources' to manage. A mistake common to both fields is to approach HR or PR as a numbers game. To succeed in either field, professionals need to look beyond statistics and understand human nature by looking at human beings - our key resources - in three ways: psychological, physiological and emotional. To put it in more simply, we need to touch the mind, body and soul.

Now, let me introduce a term that should be vital to all HR professionals - synergy. We define synergy as, "The whole being greater than the sum of its parts." The three human factors above are interrelated, inseparable, and vital to creating fantastic synergy with your employees. Affecting one (positively or negatively) will affect each of the other factors and the person as a whole. In other words, engaging all three factors results in a synergy that creates a ‘greater engagement'. The opposite of this is also true. If you fail to engage all three of these factors, the output gained will be considerably reduced and can result in employees leaving their role. It is only in recent years that HR managers have realised that to get the most out of their staff, they must engage them and they must communicate with them about their needs. This, however, is just the beginning of your ongoing PR campaign - you can go further, much further.

Holistic Talent Management

As many HR managers and senior decision makers already know, the cost (both direct and indirect) of rehiring is much more than the cost of engaging in a talent management process that strives to keep top talent happy and motivated.