What impact does HR have on your company’s talent brand?
Clearly, a lot. Otherwise, this article wouldn’t exist. But the level of impact may surprise you. Indeed, lots of takeaways from my interview with Marcus Buckingham may surprise you.
Buckingham is the head of people + performance research at the ADP Research Institute. He is also author of numerous books about talent, performance management, employee engagement, and leadership. Chances are, if you’ve worked in the talent space long enough, you’ve come across his work — or at least the influence of it.
I recently spoke with Buckingham about recent research he led that explores how to measure the quality of HR services, particularly in relation to an employer’s talent brand. Notable findings include that:
- An employee’s experience with HR is more influential than the relationship that worker has with their manager when it comes to talent brand for the company.
Let’s just stop for a second. The bullet is worth re-reading, because while the relationship with the manager has been an important part of the rhetoric that employees don’t quit companies but rather quit their managers, Buckingham challenges that notion’s simplicity with new data.
The new picture is that HR is a mediator in this relationship, and employees who have a good relationship with their manager may still not recommend their company as a good place to work based on their experiences with the HR function.
The conversation also explores what goes into a company’s HRXPS (HR Experience Score), as well as how a single point of contact in HR, frequency of HR interactions, and number of accessed HR services all help to determine whether an organization’s HR department is value-promoting. (Bonus: We also talk about whether workers will continually hate HR.)
View my conversation with Buckingham here or below: