What happens when your Human Capital team consists of people with a background in marketing? Well, you embark on a maHRketing project!

A year ago we decided it was time for The House of Marketing to not only be at the forefront of marketing, but also at the forefront of what we call Human Capital. At The House of Marketing we've always had the mindset of investing in people and enabling them to realize their full potential. 

But even if the mindset was there, we noticed our processes were still very traditional and therefore not always contributing to our goal of realizing the full potential of our THoMers. It was time for a change and so we kicked off our Talent Development project!

Main insights

The first step was to feed our Human Capital hunger with the latest trends in human resources and people management. After talks with our employees, desk research, inspirational conferences and some meetings with fellow human capital passionates from other companies, we had a pretty clear view on what we didn’t want to do. What we should do was a more difficult nut to crack. We had 2 epiphanies:

• We were clearly stuck with traditional performance management processes and were determined to shift towards a 360° talent development approach.
• Every company should design its own vision and strategy that fits the organization, values and way of working. There is no ready-to-use solution since the entire human capital community was still searching for new ways to develop talent. So no copy-paste for us. We handcrafted our own approach.

Curious to see the result? Check it out here.

Key learnings

Like with every project (whether it is in marketing or human capital) there are some key learnings. I am happy to share them with you!

1. Choose your supplier wisely. Ask yourself the question whether you want to have your platform tailor-made or not. We chose a ready-to-use platform by INTUO. This platform included all the aspects of Talent Development (also a learning/training module) and is pretty user friendly.
2. Don’t underestimate the project management that is involved. From the technical aspects (API with other internal platforms such as Salesforce) over testing to change management.
3. When it comes to change management, remember this: Even if people want change, they find it difficult to let go of their old habits and familiar processes. We therefore held several onboarding sessions, provided manuals and a FAQ, and made an internal, fun introduction video. Next to this we also developed new habits by organizing workshops about giving feedback and a webinar about goal setting.
4. Of course our inner marketer also contributed to the project and so internal branding was the (crucial) cherry on the cake. We brainstormed on a name for the approach and platform, created an elevator pitch, visuals, ... Not to forget, we had a team of talent ambassadors consisting of THoMers in all shapes and forms (from our most junior THoMers to our enthusiastic management). They were involved throughout the entire project and we used them as a sounding board to generate first reactions and feedback.
5. On a final note: Don’t forget it’s not just about a brand new digital platform! If your mindset and approach aren’t there, it will be pretty hard to convince people to give feedback, have meaningful conversations, work on their own talent development, ... As mentioned before, we already had our talent development mindset embedded in our THoM DNA. Lucky us! 😊

Want to know more about our way of developing talent? You can read everything about how we support our THoMers to follow their own track. 

Interested in realizing your own potential at The House of Marketing?