Internal Marketing is a Matter to HR Professionals

January 11, 2011

By Rachel Wu

Preamble

Undeniable – in any sector on earth, product and/or service quality is always very much associated with employee satisfaction. An essential feature of any successful organization is definitely motivated employees. One of the crucial challenges facing managers is the creation of a context within which employees feel motivated, and will act in order to achieve goals set. The question is, should the HR professionals be in place?

Internal Marketing is a Matter to HR Professionals

Rightly or wrongly, internal marketing (is often defined as inner marketing or internal communications), is part of HR’s responsibilities, besides hiring and firing. Effective internal marketing has the potential to really improve employee contributions by aligning what they do, how they do and when they do it, towards the directions of the Organization.

For instance, a particular assigned project or task requires focus on scarce resource, tight schedules, deliverables etc.; this is where internal marketing functions as a tool to facilitate the efficacy of such project or task.

The HR Management Plays a Significant Role

The HR Management should have a clear understanding of the employees’ backgrounds, their strengths, and the requirements of such project or task before trying to deploy a precise job scope and so forth.  

Implementation of Internal Marketing in Australia

Research showed that more than 68% of companies surveyed use internal market research to assess the attitudes, needs and wants of employees. Staff satisfaction and employee opinion surveys, focus groups, performance reviews, employee assessment of performance (EAP) etc. have been performed to determine employees’ attitudes, needs, and wants.  

Conclusion

Theoretically, internal marketing in all its forms is recognized as an important activity in a way to facilitating a marketing-oriented organization. Practically, internal marketing is concerned primarily with communications, with developing responsiveness, responsibility and unity of purpose. Fundamental aims of internal marketing are to develop internal and external customer awareness and remove functional barriers to organizational effectiveness. This is how internal marketing is a matter to HR professionals; they should be in place, to ensure the internal communication is in play!