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Message and Medium Matter
One of the more irritating things about living in an apartment complex are the constant attempts at outreach by merchants in the surrounding area. These business owners rightly view our apartment community as a concentrated mecca of potential business, and they use printed media to let us know they are out there. Unfortunately, the message is rarely delivered effectively because of the medium.
There are probably about 20 pizza places and a half dozen places to get Chinese carryout within a two mile radius of where I live. I swear they all send me a handbill or a coupon every week. Here’s the bad news: I never look at them. They get stuck on my windshield, in my door, in my mailbox, but I never read them or use them. They are just hand delivered trash as far as I am concerned.
I am not receiving the message because the medium doesn’t work for me. Put a coupon on my Facebook page and I might notice it. Put in on my car, and it goes in the trash at the Hess station or Dunkin Donuts when I stop to get my coffee.
The Yellow Pages
I know that all the different publications that get delivered to my stoop are not supposed to be referred to as “the Yellow Pages”, but I am going to do it anyway. So whether your book is printed by some very distant kin to Ma Bell herself or comes to me via a printer from China doesn’t really matter. I don’t look at any of them.
Listen to this advertisers: I get the book. I pick it up. I throw it in the trash. I get extra pissed because the area where I live doesn’t offer any sort of convenient recycling.
People paid to have their ads run. People paid to get those book delivered. Sometimes the books make it all the way to my front door. Sometimes, they get dumped by the communal mail area. No matter where I get them from, all of mine wind up in the trash.
Why? Because somebody somewhere came up with the idea to send me something I didn’t want or need.
I will concede that some people, perhaps even many, use these books to find services or shops that they wouldn’t have found otherwise. So there may yet be a place in the universe for books that will let you “Let you fingers do the walking”. If there wasn’t some utilization, I doubt whether people would pay to advertise in these books, the companies who sell the ads wouldn’t print them, and the dudes who dump the damn things on my steps wouldn’t get paid to do so. All that is great, but… I. Don’t. Read. Your. Damn. Books!
You are sending me something I don’t need or want.
Lots of Human Resources departments are just like the Yellow Pages
10 things to hate about HR? Start by fixing one!
I think that HR has allowed itself to become like the yellow pages. Somebody somewhere thinks they are making a good project or providing a valuable service. The companies they work for pay them to do this. People still get paid to make sure the the product or service is placed in the hands of the organizational customers.
And when they get, the customer isn’t exactly sure where it came from, why they needed it in the first place, or what they exactly they are supposed to do with it. If they act like me when I get a advertisement on my windshield, they look for the closest, most convenient trash receptacle, dump the unwanted item without really giving it much attention, and move on.
Is this happening to you? Probably!
Give the Customer what they want! (most of the time)
So here are some ways for HR peeps to start fixing their departments if they are broken like this.
- Give your customers what they want more often than giving them what you think they need!
- Tell them what you are giving them.
- Tell them why.
- Tell them what they are supposed to do with it.
- Explain the freakin’ value proposition! They need to know “WITFM”? (What’s in this for me?)
- Review your customer communication channels. Check to see if messages are getting through.
- Check the trash for discards and figure out why that happened in order to fix it.
Now, go get some shit done!
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Mike,
I’ve always loved your blog but lately, I actually can’t wait for the next post. You are NAILING it friend. I think the points you make sound so obvious, so why so many companies (and HR teams) missing the mark? Are we just too tired to fix the issues? Are we just unsure of how to do it? Are we afraid that our skills in HR may be obsolete if we aren’t able to deliver what the changing work environment needs? Maybe.
For me, I think #1 and #6 are the most telling. #1 because we all do this. We all deliver crap our companies don’t need. And #6 because that is my personal agenda for the end of 2009 and all of 2010. I want to find out why the messaging isn’t working, learn how to best brand HR, and then overhaul my internal communication skills so that I can help deliver.
#GreatHR post to keep us thinking.
Twitter: MikeVanDervort
September 27, 2009 at 5:18 pm
@Trish – I think the reason that we have been tagged as the policy police is due to the fact that so many of us have been lulled into believing the mantra that it is our job to prevent lawsuits and other types of legal issues.
Even I can buy a certain amount of that idea. Where we are falling down is in bringing reactive rather than proactive solutions at so many companies.
It’s easier to write a procedure than it is to manage correctly. We are trying to control people through oversight and policy, and it won’t work in the long term because they will hate it, and you can’t make rules fast enough to react to the emotional state of a workforce in turmoil.
Great HR starts around doing things that make the workplace healthy and holistic for employees AND the company. Managers and associates know it when they see it, just like they know crap HR when they see it.
bla, bla, bla… I want to be about finding solutions, not about this same old song. I want to make something good start happening.
I agree with Trish. Your posts are rocking Mike!
There is one competency that has been missing from HR development. I haven’t seen in it college classes or in internal HR development programs. The competency is influence.
I think one way we wreck our reputation is that we force things to happen. We use our positions as the source of our authority rather than our reputations. Yes, we are responsible for protecting and defending some things, but the answers are rarely a black and white “yes” or “no.” Yet, those are words that are used in our profession’s vernacular way to often.
I’m pointing the finger at myself here. As a young generalist I thought “the rules” were where I was supposed to be. Unfortunately, in my fledgling years, I did not have managers who steered me in the right direction. I wish that someone had taught me early on about influence, how to develop it and how to use it.
By the way, I have discovered an amazing resource. Robert Cialdini http://www.influenceatwork.com/index2.html. I particularly enjoyed his book Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion.
Mike-
This is a great analogy. And I really like the fact that you state that “Lots of HR departments are like the Yellow Pages” and not all, because HR isn’t as common a practice as we sometimes think. But it works for me because it implies that HR may need to do some re-thinking and re-tooling to better support the business they connect to. Yes, we are sort of a service to employees, but at our best, we are refining business practice and people practices to save money and improve effectiveness.
In some short-sighted companies, they only want that service-orientation. But, following your suggestions, if we all fix just one thing that’s broken in a way that improves our businesses, then we will get more opportunities.
I like working where things are going well, but some of my favorite jobs have been where things were a mess! That’s demoralizing for some, and acres of diamonds for others.
Keep up the challenging thoughts!
RT @MikeVanDervort Fixing HR: Give them what they want http://bit.ly/19q9ah