A Crash Course on Talent Communications
In my whitepaper, “How to Get a Seat at the Table”, I talk about how the HR department has changed drastically to add immense value to an organization. More specifically, I focus on how the people function has evolved, expanding its capabilities to be a fundamental component for driving cultural change and supporting organizational growth – in other words, adding more value to the success of an organization. This is sometimes referred to as the “HR Value Chain”. At the bottom of the value chain, HR is seen as simply the “keeper of information” and responsible for data and confidentiality. As the people function is enhanced, the team is looked upon as a subject matter expert and being known for having expertise in a variety of areas. And at the top of the value chain, HR is seen as a strategic business partner where they are invited to strategic conversations with organizational leaders.
While there are several ways HR can “move up the value chain” to become a strategic business partner and be included in key strategic initiatives, one of the most effective ways is to develop a talent communications strategy that supports engagement, retention, and talent attraction to grow the business.
What is a Talent Communications Strategy?
A Talent Communications Strategy is an all-encompassing roadmap to how an organization communicates with its internal and external audiences to engage, retain, and attract talent. Internally, these messages could be related to internal mobility, performance and feedback, total rewards, policies and procedures, or employee engagement. Externally, this mostly revolves around recruitment marketing tactics such as the careers website, careers social media, and materials for campus recruiting. Especially for large organizations communicating frequently on these various topics, it can be easy for messages to become disjointed and disconnected if a cohesive strategy is not in place.
At the core of this strategy is a framework that helps determine when to use different mediums for specific communications and understanding the audiences being targeted. Beyond this framework is a bigger picture of how the tone, word choice, and style of messages aligns with an organization’s corporate brand. When all of these elements are pulled together in a cohesive strategy, it leads to better messaging that creates a sense of connectedness both within and outside and organization.
Who Benefits from a Talent Communications Strategy?
First and foremost, employees within an organization benefit from a strong talent communications strategy. When there is intentionality behind how important internal messages are disseminated, employees feel cared about and therefore engaged and connected, which leads to higher levels of performance. Secondly, organizational leaders benefit from a cohesive talent communications strategy when it comes time to deliver an important message on a strategic initiative that has a heavy “people” component to it. The primary reason for this is that when such a strategy is in place, leaders will be able to rely on HR to help build the message and ensure that it speaks to employees and leads to strong outcomes. And lastly, hiring managers benefit from the external side of a talent communications strategy when recruitment marketing tactics lead to the right talent being hired to fulfill business needs. Because after all, growth and organizational success doesn’t happen without the right people in the right roles.
If you are looking to build a foundation for your new talent communications strategy, or are wanting to improve it, here are three ways to do so:
Translate Brand Values into Communication Values
Just as if you were starting a brand-new organization, it is helpful to define some core values that you want to have woven into your messages. And there is no better place to start than your corporate brand values and translate them into values that speak to how you want your communications to look and feel. Here’s an example:
Many organizations have the value of “Excellence” as one of their corporate values. As you see this, how does this translate to communications? From a process standpoint, this might look like implementing standard protocols for collaborating with subject matter experts, conducting a thorough review process, and setting the bar high for an polished deliverable. Further, when it comes to the messaging, this might mean connecting how a particular people-related initiative might help the organization and individuals achieve “Excellence”.
Embed the Mission and Vision of the Business into Your Content
One of the best ways to align talent communications to the organization is to embed the mission and vision statements into as many messages as possible. This doesn’t necessarily mean adding the entire statement to the message, but getting creative by lifting out a word or two, or even a sentence depending upon the length. Here’s an example of how you could achieve this:
If a part of your mission is to have sound financial and business standards, and you are delivering a people-related message that has a financial component associated with it (i.e. Compensation, Expense Policies, etc..) consider making a strong connection between the two. For example, if you are communicating a new expense policy, you could say something like, “As a part of the organization’s mission to maintain sound financial and business standards, we’ve evaluated our expense policy and decided to make x change…”
Create Authenticity by Aligning Internal and External Messages
Have you ever started at an organization and immediately felt a distinct difference between the internal and external message? In other words, what was marketed to you in terms of the culture was drastically different than what you experienced in your first weeks and months as a team member. This can create a wide variety of challenges, especially from an employee morale standpoint. To avoid this, it is important that what you say externally is authentic and true for what the “real story” is inside the organization. Here’s an example of how to navigate with a particular topic that organizations can experience challenges with: Diversity and Inclusion.
There is pressure in today’s business world to be on the leading edge of D&I programs, and that can lead to organizations making promises they can’t keep externally. For example, if you market your organization as an inclusive environment with specific programs dedicated to each and every team member, are you truly going to be able to provide evidence of that when a person joins your organization? It is better to be realistic with where you truly are at than overpromise. In this case, if you wouldn’t be able to back this statement up, you could say: “We’re committed to creating an inclusive working environment, which includes the development of programs through our dedicated D&I team.”
How to Get Started
Now you have a foundation to work from to build your talent communications strategy, you might be wondering, how do I get started? Here is a link to a free resource to help you get your ideas down on paper with the following:
Your audiences
Your brand values
Translating your brand values into communication values
Identifying your voice and tone for talent communications
Identifying your mediums and when to use them
My hope is that these fundamentals will help you build or improve your talent communications strategy! Need more help? Contact me here and we’ll get in touch!
