SUPERCHARGE YOUR HR STRATEGY

Q&A WITH HELEN MATTHEWS 

At our September breakfast networking event, Helen Matthews of Weber Shandwick explored how adopting a marketer’s mindset can boost your HR strategy. With her wealth of experience and unrivalled expertise, Helen provided actionable content on how to use marketing tools to disseminate the people strategy into effective human centric solutions.

We caught up with her recently to find out more about what inspired her to take this innovative approach. 

1. CAN YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOU AND YOUR CAREER TO DATE?

I’m probably the epitome of the squiggly career. Most of my earlier roles were in TV production and broadcasting, I love working with creatives and I’m passionate about the arts and creative industries. I genuinely believe they’re intrinsic to enriching our culture, so being a part of that made sense tome. I then had a portfolio career for a while, coaching, working with start-ups and designing leadership development – I loved every project, but when I was offered a role in-house with Ogilvy, it felt like the right time to really feel part of a team again. In 2022, I moved to Weber Shandwick, which is part of IPG. 

2. WHERE DID YOU GET THE INSPIRATION TO USE MARKETING TOOLS TO IMPROVE YOUR PEOPLE STRATEGY? 

I actually studied marketing and advertising as part of my degree many years ago – and in recent years I felt that some of the tools and thinking were so closely aligned to what we try to achieve in our people strategies. So by using the different lenses applied by our marketing colleagues, I found it good to both challenge my own thinking and also open up opportunities and different ways think about how to solve the problem.

3. IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT ARETHE BENEFITS OF THIS APPROACH? 

I find that there is always something shinyand new coming down the track. Theaverage person scrolls through 300 FEET ofmobile content. Every. Day. Distraction iseverywhere. 

On top of this we often hear tall tales of competitors doing amazing things – offering amazing pay, amazing benefits, and amazing work life balance. We see initiatives we are professionally envious of or that we think could be a perfect to solution to a problem. 

The result is that HR functions are overloaded– struggling to the keep up with the trends,spewing out multiple initiatives to earn theirseat at the table whilst also keeping thewheels on with BAU tasks. 

By using marketeer thinking and borrowing some of their methodologies, I try get my strategy to meet the needs, wants, and demands of both current and future employees, whilst keeping everything laddering back to my original business strategy. All the while, being able to flex and pivot!

4. CAN YOU GIVE US SOME EXAMPLES OF THE TYPES OF TOOLS YOU USE? 

I really like a lot of the marketing frame works as they can be easily viewed through a people lens and once the worked through can result in a robust, actionable plan. They also help to keep ensure I am tightly aligned to business objectives and to keep me laser focused on the direction of travel without getting distracted by shiny new “nice-to-haves”. 

I particularly like the Multichannel MarketingGrowth Wheel and the Business AmbitionStar. I also think we can borrow from the way marketeers tend to be customer rather than product centric – using customer research to inform their strategies, nudges and effective storytelling to create behavioural change and design thinking to challenge assumptions and better understand users. 

Jessica Zwaan has recently published a book called Built for People – which is very much principled around building solutions with a product management mentality. She describes treating employees as subscribers which I also think is a smart approach.

5. WHAT OUTCOMES HAVE HAD FROM USING THIS APPROACH? 

We have so many proof points where using many of the tools have reaped tangible results. Our internal influencers at Weber Shandwick (Our SideBoard) are making great moves for example, and really helping drive employee advocacy and connectivity. By taking a product development approach to our mobility programme, we created something that is really needed and wanted by our people. And it’s sustainable, giving transparency to career development and opportunity for everyone. 

6. FINALLY, WHAT IS YOUR TOP TIPFOR ANYONE STARTING DOWN THIS PATH?  

When it comes to any project, I always tell my team to start with the ted talk question –the so what? Why are you doing this in the first place? If that’s tricky to answer, it probably means this project is probably not the answer. Other than that, be human, be brave, be bold, be commercial and be truthful. 

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