Why Marketers Are Working With HR to Take Ownership of Company Culture Culture is the foundation of your brand and culture begins with the people you hire.
By Yoav Vilner
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Company culture is one of the commonly overlooked things to tackle when building a business. Founders often think it's something extra and fun, but it needs to be something you're proactive about as soon as you start hiring.
Culture components like atmosphere and work-life balance, according to Randstad's latest employer brand research, are key to both attracting and retaining talent. They found that 45 percent of respondents see work-life balance as a reason to choose an employer, while 28 percent see it as a reason to quit. Work atmosphere also accounted for 44 percent of answers, and flexible arrangements 32 percent.
Related: These 5 Companies Were Rated Best for Work-Life Balance. Is Yours Anything Like Them?
How you build your team to work and interact with each other sets the stage for how other functions and departments of your business work. And as millennials and younger generations continue to gain share in the workforce, business values will continue to shift, with company culture only getting more important.
As personnel and brand become increasingly intertwined, marketing teams are taking more ownership over culture optimization initiatives and the public-facing messaging surrounding them. Employees are key pieces of the puzzle. The most authentic and engaging content will come not from ad campaigns but from the experts inside their own company sharing what they know and what they love.
Let's take a deeper look at why your HR department needs to work closely with marketing to develop and broadcast your culture.
Marketers are messaging experts.
If you need to help spread enthusiasm and support for culture and values within your company, marketers are the ones to help. Because marketing already owns areas like content, and maybe even branding and communications, they're likely already at least tangentially involved. All the better if you can get them thinking about publicity around recruitment demand and how to hire people based on cultural fit.
Even in a more general sense, they're hopefully amazing at defining and communicating ideas and know how to do so both clearly and creatively. With something that may be perceived as boring by some, that's an important skill to have for centering your organization around culture.
Related: Why You Should Hire Team Members the Way NFL Teams Draft Players
Silos are breaking.
Another reason for HR to share company culture with marketing is that silos in general are becoming passé. Breaking silos in favor of more cross-collaboration is gaining momentum as a business value, and a great starting point for building that into your own company culture is in the culture work itself.
As explained above, it makes complete sense for HR to get support defining culture from those who are experts in defining and spreading a message or value proposition. It also makes complete sense for marketing to devote time and effort to such a task.
Marketing should be there to support the business at any stage to help it grow. That can include recruiting and engaging employees to do their jobs that will grow the business. For example, take how marketing can be of help in recruiting. They have access to your email lists, social channels and industry connections. And their job already involves communicating with them.
Marketing is in touch with the rest of the business.
Finally, in a collaborative company where marketing assists growth or communication in any area, marketing is likely going to have lots of working relationships with other departments of your business. Collaborating with other teams a lot means marketing will naturally be in tune with the rest of your employees and how other departments function.
Good marketers know how to work with product and support teams on documentation, and they know how to work with sales reps on demo deck copy to cite two common manifestations.
Related: 10 Steps Leaders Can Take to Create a Culture of Candor
Culture needs collaboration.
As company culture becomes more important to the recruiting and engagement of employees, we're likely to see it become a bigger factor in customer satisfaction and sales as well. Once again, marketers know this.
The sooner HR begins collaborating with marketing to cultivate a strong culture in your organization, the stronger your entire team will be.
