I walked into a supermarket not too long ago and was thrilled to find displayed in the coolers, very well packaged and appealing bottles of mashed kenkey for sale. This triggered my curiosity, and since then, I have made it a point to scout the shelves of shops to find out what the Ghanaian entrepreneur has been up to; and I have been pleasantly surprised. These days, one can buy almost anything that used to take great efforts to prepare, from bottled “kpakposhito” (a variety of local green pepper) to packaged “koko” (corn meal) to packaged chewing sticks… the list is endless.

If anyone thought it was only in the area of technology that change was drastic, you need to think again. The evidence is all around us, particularly in consumer preferences.

Marketing experts tell us today that any long term plan based on brand loyalty is a shaky one, as the average consumer’s appetite for new things is shifting the focus of marketing strategies.  Businesses that win now are those that invest in intimately engaging with their consumers on a constant basis in order to continuously determine their needs and preferences and produce goods and services that meet these needs.

Not only have consumers become difficult to please, the global economic downturn and environmental awareness is increasing the pressure on businesses to find innovative ways of achieving growth, reducing cost and being sensitive to the effect their operations have on the environment.

So what does all this mean for the HR practitioner? How agile is the HR role and how is it adapting to align with the fast pace at which businesses are changing?

We may find answers by looking at how top talent is sourced and what we can learn from the Marketing function.

Recruitment

Consider the key function of recruitment and it will appear that the average organization seems to approach recruitment as though we were still in the 20^th Century. Many organizations appear to continue to use the same process of advertising jobs, manually sifting through a pile of CV’sandconducting face to face interviews. Admittedly, the medium of advertising job vacancies has varied these days to include websites, but the rest of the processremains largely unchanged.

The above long, tried and tested approach appears to have lost sight of the fact that different tactics may be required to attract different types of talent. 

Think about the exceptional talent you will want to attract, who is currently employed in another organization (possibly your competitor), but who though is not actively seeking a new job, will contemplate a move if something ‘interesting’ comes their way? Referred to as passive talent, this category of people are the kinds that are the most likely to impact on the fortunes of businesses but will definitely not respond to a widely advertised role, even if they find it interesting.

It is common to find recruiters continuously tearing their hair apart when, after sifting through tons of applications, they are unable to short-list suitable candidates. Unfortunately, so called recruitment agencies are of little help in sourcing top talent as they operate in essentially the same way, looking for talent in the same pool that everyone is searching from. HR Managers have often complained that they have received CVs of the same persons from different agencies.

It is no wonder that one of the major frustrations business leaders have with the HR function is the perception that the function is fixated on being a ‘guard dog’; the guardian of rules, regulations and procedures (some of them with questionable relevance today); rather than being open to innovation and unwilling to experiment with new ideas.

What lessons can HR practitioners learn from their marketing colleagues to enable them improve the outcome of their recruitment, particularly, to recruit those hard to fill roles because of the scarcity of specific skills and experience?

Segmenting

In the world of marketing, consumer segmentation is used to better understand consumer orientation and differentiation. The process helps markets to be divided into groups or segments of customers with similar needs or characteristics, who are likely to exhibit similar purchase behaviour.

Market segmentation acknowledges that different 'types' of consumers may require different products or marketing approaches.

One advantage of market segmentation is that it allows better understanding of consumers as consumers change their preferences and patterns of behaviour over time. With segmentation, marketers are better able to understand these changes and develop products and services that fulfil the need of a consumer at that particular stage.

As organisations have dramatically changed the way business is done, it goes without saying that not only have the knowledge and skills required to drive this new phase of businesses changed, the needs and expectations of those with these newly acquired exceptional skills are also changing and until the HR practitioner understands what is important to top talent, many will miss out attracting such talent to their organisations.

How then can HR practitioners position themselves to adapt to these changes? One way would be by adopting the same segmentation approach of their marketing colleagues in approaching recruitment of top talent.

A few key questions are relevant on this quest.

·         How robust and agile is your organisation’s people plan and to what extent is it aligned to the changing needs of your business?

·         How clearly defined are the knowledge, skills and behaviours that your business requires to drive its medium and long term goals?

·         What are your organisation’s most critical roles? That is, those roles that have the highest impact on revenue or profit, or those roles critical to delivering strategy?

·         Are there at least 2 successors for each critical role?

·         How strong is your employer brand, and how credible is your employee value proposition?

·         What is the extent of your presence on social media?

Most importantly, what is the strategy to source and attract exceptional talent to fill specific roles that become vacant?

A great tool that has become very effective in supporting the ability to improve recruitment outcomes is the use of social professional networks. Quite surprisingly, in spite of credible research showing its effectiveness, very few HR practitioners have a well-crafted strategy that utilises these networks to attract high performing but passive talent.

Used effectively, social professional networks will provide the following advantages that help attract top talent:

·         They give the opportunity to promote an online employer brand by creating a company profile where information about products and services will be shared. Top talent then get to appreciate what the company has to offer and helps them make informed choices

·         They create the opportunity to profile potential candidates and match their capabilities and skills to job vacancies; and as a result help in more specific targeting

·         They allow the building of relationships directly with candidates through private messaging. This relationship can continue even if the candidate is not immediately interested in the role. This could result in these candidates referencing your organisation to other top talent

·         Some professional networks allow searching through specific fields like past or current employers of candidates. This is useful, for example, if one is interested in recruiting from competitors. This helps in narrowing the search and helps in determining what is out there.

At a recent West Africa HR Conference held in Accra, attended by over 30 delegates from West, East and South Africa; it became extremely apparent that calls for the HR function to ‘learn more about the business’ and ‘demonstrate impact’ so that it can ‘add value’ has become very loud.

Perhaps it is time for HR practitioners to respond to this call by showing how creative they can be in the area of recruitment, for a start.

Sigismund Dzeble, Human Resource Manager, PZ Cussons Ghana