Employee, Customer and Value

Previous posts on Business Value 101, Business Value 102 and the Value of People have brought to light a customer focused approach to setting the HR and Corporate Communications agenda while imploring  business leaders to stop talking about the cash liquid value of people as if it were a compliment (it is not).    The overriding message in all this is to create great communications and HR programs that  raise the value of the firm.  As suggested already, a good start is to employ the best-of existing sales and marketing strategies to drive employee behavior as well as customer behavior.  The sales department is usually doing a lot of good things already that the HR department typically is not.  Make the Switch.

That’s not to imply that employees are the same as customers– in the adult world of serious commerce they are most definitely NOT the same.  However, both audiences are people in the human being sense so a lot of tools and methods that work with one group to get them to buy something can work with the other to get them to do something.  However–and this is important–the business common ground between employee and customer ends there.

Employee as Customer

As previously described, business leaders arbitrarily and erroneously throw around catchy phrases about the value of people by calling them assets and human capital in conflict the Income Statement, which clearly and correctly records payroll as an Expense.     In the same vernacular of inaccurate corporate jargon here’s another one that’s said a lot but obviously never practiced: We (the company) should treat employees the same—even better some say—than how we treat paying customers. That’s a very nice idea.  After all, great employees create the customer experience, they really do.  But in practical application, describing your employees as customers is nothing but a big fat lie.

Of course employees are not customers. When was the last time your company fired a paying customer?! Let’s stay with the 101 of it, please—the company is paid by customers. Employees are paid by the company. The employee’s customer then, is your company—you are paying them, not the other way around. You are the customer. The employee should delight you as such.  That’s fundamental. Incidentally, HR people are paid by the company too.  So when push comes to shove whose interest will HR ultimately support?  The company of course. We better.  That’s our job. Employees understand that, by the way.  Of course they do.

But that’s not what a lot of HR people say.  Instead there is a lot of talk about striking a balance, facilitating in the interest of both parties and walking a difficult line between employee and company. There’s nothing difficult about the line.  It’s pretty clear to everyone else.  Yet some in HR would like the world to think it is our moral obligation and most important job to play the middle, with a heavy leaning as advocate for the worker bee.  It just isn’t true, pure and simple. Fortunately, no one believes it anyway.

The Switch here for the HR enlightened is plain enough—stop saying it. Stop lying.  Switch HR and turn on the light of truth.  Employees don’t want lip service; they don’t want spin; they get the game and it’s okay. Employees do want transparency; they do want sincerity; they want the truth, the real-deal. Great business communications is all about getting the truth to the right people at the right time in the most efficient way.  The truth is effective.  It’s place in business is number one.

Customers are people too

Finally, did you ever notice that customers are people too? If HR professionals are indeed experts in great communication, fairness, motivation, education and high morale—all to help people succeed, as we like to say—then why isn’t HR all about using people expertise to help the customer?

Here are a few signs that your HR and corporate communications strategies are going in the right direction:

• When your employee training and performance management system is so effective and so cool that it wins supplier innovation awards from the customer.
• When big-ticket client presentations include the top HR person.
• When clients visit your workplace and visually see your advanced, strategic approach to employee communications, productivity enhancement and hard-driving, constant activity on the customers’ behalf.
• When your training and development communications and learning content highlights, guess who? That’s right– the customer.
• When your company Intranet, web-based University and sensible, simple performance management system are so attractive and so well packaged, that the customer really will buy it from you.
• When your company wins public recognition and high praise for employer excellence and community service that impresses the customer.
• When all this is done at no additional cost, really, to the customer.

If that’s your trend, you are turning on the light.  If not, its time to Switch HR to a far better way for Employee, Customer and true business Value. Stay tuned.  More truth to come.