Are PR and HR – a match made in heaven? Communications and human resources have always been at the forefront of helping successful organisations meet their goals and objectives. In this guest blog post, Managing Director Chris Taylor of marketing and public relations agency DTW looks at how HR and communications professionals can work together to create success.
As an agency, we often work closely with our client’s HR function on public relations and marketing campaigns, and where this happens it invariably results in outcomes that are greater than might be achieved by comms or HR working alone.
So, if you’re a HR team planning your next piece of employee engagement or recruitment campaign, here are our top tips for how you can incorporate public relations and marketing into your activity and get the most out of it:
1. Set your objectives
The first thing we think about when we set out on any new marketing or communications campaign is what we’re ultimately looking to achieve. For a HR team that might be something as simple as raising awareness of a new employee benefit scheme or, at the other end of the scale, could be as complex as increasing the number of high quality applications you receive for vacancies you are advertising.
In either case, you should always think about how these objectives link back to the wider aims and objectives of your organisations.
2. Know your audience!
Another key consideration that comes into the work that we do with our clients is knowing who our audience is. Depending on who you’re trying to reach can result in needing to take very different approaches to activity; especially with the messages and tone of voice you are using.
Knowing your audience, what you want to say to them and how you want to say it can be equally important when it comes to communicating internally with your team and building your company culture.
3. Be clear about your organisation’s vision and values
Speaking of company culture, some of the most successful projects we have delivered for our clients are those where we have had to draw strongly on an established set of vision and values – sometimes known as an employer brand – or, in some cases, build the foundations to create one from scratch.
A good example of how we worked with a client with an established employer brand is the production of a Brand vision film for our client SUEZ, who are a global resource and recycling company. The film we produced put the company’s staff at the core of the work they are doing to lead the recycling sector, creating a link between the employees and the vision of the company.
4. Work as a single team to achieve your objectives
The most successful campaigns are those where communications and human resources work together as a single team towards achieving an objective.
A great example of how this can work in reality is work we delivered with our client North Yorkshire County Council to develop a campaign to attract high calibre teaching professionals to relocate to the North Yorkshire coast. This involved us working closely with the council’s in-house recruitment team to create an employer brand from scratch whilst developing a campaign which focused on the lifestyle and location aspects of the roles being recruited.
Both this and the work we did with SUEZ demonstrate what can be achieved when communications and human resources work in harmony, and why it should be a key consideration for HR teams whenever they’re planning activity.
When deciding whether the scheme is right for you and your business, we suggest considering how your business is operating in the current climate and how this will impact on your ability to provide support to an individual undertaking a 6 month work placement.
If you are considering Kickstart placements for your business and would like to discuss whether now is the right time for you to get involved in the scheme, feel free to get in touch as we would be happy to help!
We hope this has given you a new insight on how pr and how are a match made in heaven. For support on your HR strategy, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team.
