internal marketing

Gemma Middleton, Communications Specialist, discusses her thoughts on internal marketing in respect of creating a buy-in culture for learning and development initiatives.

For years, organisations have realised that in order for customers to buy-in to the organisation and / or its products they have needed to communicate its values, benefits and what they stand for. Internal marketing has become just as important as external marketing as organisations have realised for initiatives to work and to be successful they need their employees to buy-in to the schemes. This applies for any type of initiative, be it a change in company structure, targets or learning and development programmes.

Research has shown the main benefits that creating a buy-in culture within any organisation are that it:

• Raises the profile of the project – more people within the organisation would know about the project, what it’s for and the benefits that it will bring them both individually and for the whole organisation
• Raises credibility for both the project and those involved – allowing the employees involved to have a sense of pride and see that their efforts are worthwhile
• Creates a motivated team – people will work hard and together because they care about the project outcome and do not want it to fail

The majority of HR departments want to raise their profiles within organisations to improve relations with other employees. HR can market themselves in a number of different ways and the most important of those is to communicate regularly and clearly with employees about polices, procedures and any up and coming learning and development initiatives.

By communicating regularly on these topics, it will make it easy for employees to understand what is going on and more importantly why. With regular communication, it would make lengthy policies and procedures easier to understand and, more importantly, employees are more likely to know they exist. The skill of communicating effectively is often taken for granted, but if it is done right proves to be extremely beneficial. To find out the benefits of our communication skills programmes, click on the link. Suggestions on how to increase communication are discussed further on in this article.

Another valuable aspect of marketing that HR departments should invest their time in is actually interacting with employees, getting to know them and asking their thoughts and opinions. This puts a physical element to the HR bow as employees would actually see members of HR making the rounds and interested in matters that are affecting employees. This will help to build relationships with individuals and departments making it easier to implement new initiatives, which would hopefully lead to less resistance for future projects. To support this, e-surveys would be ideal as it would enable employees to raise any concerns that they would feel uncomfortable to do face-to-face. To be effective, e-surveys need to be specific to your organisation. Our customers found the knowledge invaluable that the e-survey generated. To find out more about e-surveys, click on the link.

HR departments should also capitalise on their successes and not just sit on them. Results should be published throughout the organisation, with particular emphasis to the departments / projects that the result revolves around. Take full advantage of creating internal case studies on your successes and think about releasing these to the general press. If you gain press coverage external to the organisation this will add creditability to it and will make your employees feel proud of the company.

Finally, HR should try marketing their services within their organisations. This could involve a number of methods such as monthly e-newsletters, a dedicated intranet site with news bulletins and forums or a company blog. A good way to tackle this idea would be to talk to your marketing department, they are marketers after all and that is what they do for a living. They would be able to advise on the feasibility of ideas and maybe give good direction on what actions to take.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure you gain the respect and praise that you deserve. A highly respected HR department will find it much easier to create a buy-in culture.