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Brand value is often a sign of goodwill. Remember when you value a company, anything that is not physical assets is considered goodwill in the overall enterprise value and is often attributed to brand.
Well, human resources (HR) is all about goodwill, and therefore brand. The need to manage the HR brand therefore turns the HR head into a brand manager and HR expert - an interesting proposition.
Granted, it may sound a bit of a stretch to think of HR as a brand to be developed. The fact is, in many companies the HR brand is suffering from a poor image and reputation and rarely has HR marketed as to what their brand image promises. Instead of taking time to define what they stand for and how they will accomplish their mission, HR often does things in a certain way simply because it is their job.
If HR needs to be perceived as more strategic, valuable and reliable, they need to start thinking about what their customers want, how well will they be delivered and how to improve their overall brand image. This is not just about fancy packaging, catchy slogans and name changes, either. This is about thinking like a business with a product to be developed, marketed and reliably delivered to customers who want their services.
HR brand, like all brands, lives in mind of 'customers' - employees and the management team. Their brand equity is created when the brand is thoughtfully built; carefully managed and positive associations are cemented. It gets diluted when the brand is mismanaged or neglected. HR can either nurture or destroy it. The HR brand gets into customer's mind by associating itself with ideas that already exist there and it is best if those associations are positive. It is about making and keeping promises and the HR brand should make promises that are meaningful to its customers. More importantly, deliver them whereby customer expectations are exceeded consistently.
Remember, HR is a service organisation and its services are produced in the customer's presence. This means that quality of experience delivered by the service process often has much greater impact on customer's perception rather than quality of end-product itself. HR needs to focus on improving 'how' they perform services, align performance with customer benefits and deliver with consistency. HR needs to focus on its strengths first and by solidifying them, bad habits that contribute to weaknesses will diminish in importance.
HR brand is meaningless if it does not positively resonate with customers and this usually happens when it is not organised to deliver something that customers value highly. Knowing customer expectations well ensures emphasis on quality delivery on the brand promise. The harder part is living up to their brand promise every day, every minute and great HR brands emerge because of 'promises made and promises kept'.
Like companies, HR needs to continuously review brands to meet customers' changing needs. HR professionals must make tough decisions about what they will and will not stand for. The best will try new things and challenge conventional HR wisdom in order to deliver their brand promise.
Sanjiv Anand is the managing director, and Bhaskar Menon, a principal consultant at Cedar Management Consulting International.
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