When HR turns to marketing concepts - Territorial onboarding
In order to respond to the challenges of talent scarcity and higher turnover rates, HR departments in organisations are turning to concepts from marketing. It is no longer a question of considering employees as "human resources" but as "customer employees", who choose to invest their skills in the organisation.
Rhizome startups share their expert views on HR Marketing in this capsule series.
Switch Up - the platform allowing newcomers to be helped in their arrival in a territory thanks to local inhabitants - talks about territorial onboarding which feeds the company's HR strategy.
Gabrielle, founder of Switch Up, gives her testimony.
In my opinion, HR Marketing corresponds to the implementation of a strategy that aims to present a positive and attractive image of the company to its current and future employees. This strategy is put in place thanks to a range of tools that HR departments will use to embody the company's values and culture through the employer brand.
Like any marketing strategy, HR departments will define objectives to be reached (a turnover rate, a number of applications, etc.) with a specific target (internal or external).
"You don't sell a car or toothpaste like you sell a job in a company. Why not? Simply because on the one hand we are talking about a product and on the other hand we are talking about a human experience.
However, the HR part makes a real difference in the marketing approach: the company has to be able to explain that these benefits have to be put forward in an honest and transparent way. Let me explain: If a toothpaste doesn't do what it was designed to do (clean teeth) it is unlikely to be bought back. However, if a job doesn't live up to its promises, it's much more risky for the employee, and when you touch people, the consequences are all the more important (from the candidate's point of view but also from the company's).
One of the areas that is not often used by companies in HR marketing is the territorial component: the geographical environment in which the company is located is often not emphasised or not at all. The company must also be able to talk about its territory and it is on this theme that Switch Up tries to bring its expertise. Switch Up enables companies to talk about their environment on a geographical level. In other words, our solution helps companies to highlight their location (territorial onboarding) as an important element of the jobs they offer. The geographical environment of the company is part of the conditions of employment and becomes a differentiating factor when this point is taken into account from the job advertisement to the onboarding period of the employee within the structure.
The aim is to make the employee fit into the geographical area where the company is located. This allows all companies to talk about their geographical location and to define who they are by showing that behind the term HR marketing, we are talking about people.
