DYNAMIC DUO: How HR + Marketing Can Partner to Ignite Organizational Transformation

Embarking on organizational transformation will require major shifts in our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. To take our organizations to the next level, we will have to reimagine how things have always been done and recreate a new way that better serves the changing landscape in which we live.

One of the key partnerships that will need to be reworked is the relationship between marketing leaders and HR professionals.

In the past, this relationship, though functional, has been largely transactional. Both teams are acting within their own departments and functions and only crossing the aisle when a specific task needs to be completed.

Whether it’s HR reaching out for a bit of creative assistance with a new recruitment ad, or marketing requesting the new policies that need communicated in the monthly all-staff newsletter, both teams are fairly independent and only supporting each other on an as-needed basis.

But, to help your health system increase its impact and influence, we need this valuable partnership to be not merely transactional, but transformational.

Re-Imagining the Partnership between Marketing + HR

Though the roles of marketing and HR may seem fairly unrelated, leaders in these two departments are a lot more alike than we may think.

To be successful in their positions, both marketers and HR professionals must possess a high level of empathy, deep commitment to serving their employees and stakeholders, and be highly tactical and strategic to hit their metrics and meet their departmental goals.

Rather than dividing and conquering and diminishing the effect of that collective brainpower, we believe a collaborative and highly interactive partnership between these two parties can exponentially increase their impact and ignite powerful transformation within your health system.

How HR + Marketing Can Unite to Lead Effective Organizational Transformation

Leveling up your organization successfully will require that all leaders are continually seeking for ways their departments can contribute to increasing employee engagement, improving patient experience, and inspiring operational innovation, but HR and marketers have unique skillsets and abilities that will help them particularly excel in this work.

Both groups of leaders are deeply experienced in understanding the needs of employees and customers and inspiring others to take action. They also both have a connection and duty to internal and external stakeholders that grants them the access and influence needed to envision and implement vital strategic initiatives and drive organizational change.

As we embark on the journey of improving our organizations, we want to find ways we can maximize this collaboration and bring our best minds together to help us solve our most pressing strategic challenges.

Let’s explore four key culture strategies where this dynamic duo can partner to ignite organizational transformation:

1. Recruitment

Recruiting top talent to your team is one of the most foundational elements of building a healthy and thriving organization and culture.

Our capacity for impact at our health systems will ultimately come down to the quality of the team that serves on the front lines, provides care and service to our patients and customers, and keeps the machine running behind the scenes. Without a dedicated, resourceful, and capable team, nothing we strive to achieve at our health system will succeed.

While the HR team is usually the sole owner of the recruitment function, leveraging the skills of the marketing department can help radically increase both the quality and quantity of candidates, helping to build a better organization one new employee at a time.

Marketers can help improve recruitment by getting back to the root of what our health system is all about and what we offer to current and future employees. They can help distill our benefits and offerings into a well-crafted Employee Value Proposition that communicates our differentiators and then help build out an Employer Brand that consistently expresses our value and deeply engages potential recruits.

Marketers can elevate the creative, messaging, and reach of the HR team’s recruitment marketing materials and ensure we’re attracting candidates that would be an ideal cultural fit, while deterring those who will not thrive within our organizational culture.

Bringing our marketers and HR professionals together to meet our recruitment needs ensures we’re staying creative, innovative, and fresh in our approach; we’re clearly communicating our values to attract the best possible candidates; and we’re reaching enough of the right audiences to effectively and efficiently fill important vacancies.

2. Retention

When we’ve improved the quality of our recruits, our next biggest task will be retaining the top talent we’ve found and keeping peak performers in our system for the long haul.

As experts in journey mapping and touchpoint communication planning, marketers can help HR transform the employee experience from first interaction with us as a potential employer all the way through retirement.

With the marketer’s expert ability to create memorable moments of connection and the HR leader’s intimate knowledge of the employees’ deepest wants and needs, together, they can build a meaningful and fulfilling employee experience through each of the Seven Stages of Employee Engagement.

Tactically, they can team up on employee surveys, employee focus groups, and hosting culture-building events to build camaraderie and connection among the team.

Additionally, while HR can help create repeatable systems and processes that cement best practices into the fabric of the culture, marketing can deliver compelling and consistent communication that rallies the team together, creates shared experiences and points of connection, and deepens employee loyalty and commitment to the organization.

3. Leadership

Building a leadership model and launching a Leadership Development initiative may feel a bit out of reach for both marketing and HR leaders, but together, they make the perfect team for creating a leadership program that resonates.

HR leaders are deeply familiar with the internal challenges and struggles that employees at all levels are experiencing and have surely heard their fair share of complaints and concerns about leadership from their employees. Having the pulse on the real challenges allows HR to speak up for which lessons and trainings will be most needed to help rebuild trust and credibility within the team.

The HR department is also experienced in leading department-wide or all-staff trainings on new policies and procedures, compliance and regulatory concerns, and guiding new team members through the onboarding and orientation process.

For their part, marketers bring the creative, technical, and production know-how needed to deliver large-scale teaching to your staff as well as the messaging and presentation prowess to ensure the content connects.

Having both your HR leaders and marketing team on the steering committee of your leadership development initiative will allow you to build a program that specifically addresses your health system's unique challenges, makes a measurable impact, and effectively transforms your organization system-wide.

4. Innovation

If our organization is not growing or adapting, it’s dying. We must stay in pace with the rapidly evolving changes in the healthcare industry to continue to earn the privilege of providing patient care.

Building a culture of innovation at your health system must become a top priority of every leader, and integrating an innovation-first mindset into your organizational culture is another avenue where the dynamic duo of HR + marketing can really shine.

HR leaders will bring a comprehensive knowledge of the skills, talents, and abilities of your entire organizational team, and can help elevate talent from within your staffing pool that has what it takes to address the challenges at hand. Marketing can help communicate where innovative solutions are needed and generate excitement and energy around building a potential solution.

Together, they can partner to host innovation challenges and thought leadership forums that create friendly competition around innovation and inspire employees to push the envelope and dare to create original solutions to recurring challenges. Coordinating a system-wide, all-staff event will require both leaders to leverage their connections and strengths to help integrate innovation more deeply into your company culture.

Creating an Unstoppable Transformation Team

When HR and marketing leaders come together, there is virtually nothing they can’t do.

These empathetic, human-centric, strategic thinkers with both creativity and commitment to process and tactical planning will be able to find powerful solutions to any problems that may arise.

Bridging the gap between these two departments and beginning to deepen this relationship can happen with a few simple, informal meetings. To kick things off, try scheduling a recurring lunch where each leader can share their challenges and needs, discuss visions for the future of the organization, and dive into how—together—they can make these dreams a reality.

If you’re looking to increase the effectiveness of partnerships on your leadership team, working with a strategic advisor can help. Schedule a call with our consultants to help facilitate an executive visioning session with your team today.