Competing for Talent: Lessons from the World of Marketing

While conducting research on the latest theories about organization effectiveness and the nature of complex, adaptive systems, I was struck by the parallels to a world I know a lot about: marketing, sales, and customer relationship management.

The data says we are facing a severe shortage in prime-aged (ages 25-54 years) workers in the coming decades, which means there will be competition for the best talent, even if this recovery will be “job-less” in the near term. When the imperative to compete more aggressively for customers emerged in the late ‘80’s and 90’s, we saw massive investments in the data, technologies, and analytics to better understand and more efficiently meet the needs of customers. TQM, Customer Satisfaction, Direct Marketing, and CRM all emerged out of the relentless focus on reaching, acquiring, and retaining customers. We are an adaptive species so in times of scarcity we always get creative in how we compete for resources, whether it be game, water, customers, or workers.

The good companies have always valued their best talent. But in recent years, with such intense focus on improving the bottom line and reducing expenses through repeated restructurings, many companies have reverted to an “employees-as-parts” mentality – believing that employees can be shed and reacquired at will, like ordering parts from a catalog. As this recession ends, these companies will be in for a rude awakening.

They will have to learn how to compete for people and they will be well served to take a page from the Marketing Best-Practices Handbook:

• Understand that your relationship with your customer employee is a two-way street which grows stronger only when there is a healthy flow of value between both parties
• Understand your customer’s employee’s needs, expectations and values
• Segment your customers employees into needs-based segments in order to more effectively address segment-specific needs and wants
• Understand that not all customers employees are created equal and that different approaches will be required for different people
• Understand customer employee preferences for communication and interaction across all available touch points so that your expenditures to reach them are efficient and effective
• Understand where your customer employee is on the employee lifecycle and determine how his or her needs may differ depending on where they are.

Also like the world of marketing, the leader who better addresses the needs and expectations of his or her workforce will be rewarded with greater energy, engagement, and loyalty. The days of unspoken contracts for long-term employment are long gone. The younger generations have no expectations for or belief in loyalty from their employer, mainly because the companies can no longer promise loyalty in return. So in the realm of talent engagement, like customer relationship management, the only thing that really works is building a strong relationship between the organization and the individual, a relationship in which both parties perceive real value.

Scott