This successful business will teach you A LOT about segmenting, targeting, and positioning your future workforce!
As someone with over 30 years of experience in the business and consulting industries, one of the things I've found to be a game-changer in managing my team is RDS. If you’re not yet familiar with this, RDS is a pyramid-shaped framework with 11 tenets and 3 foundations. When applied properly, these principles help businesses achieve high levels of performance. Today, let's delve deeper into another aspect of the 9th tenet of RDS: Engage Employees and Others. Continue reading below to discover what a great human resources (HR) department looks like.
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This successful business will teach you A LOT about segmenting, targeting, and positioning your future workforce! “The same skills found in a great marketing department are found in the skills of a great human resources department.” Great marketers understand the importance of knowing how to segment various customer groups depending on their common needs, target the right customer groups, and position a business’ offerings in ways that can generate interest and purchases from customers. Likewise, according to Professor Joel Litman and Dr. Mark L. Frigo in the book, “Driven,” employee-related efforts should mirror strategic marketing. What does this mean? Return-driven businesses consider what the attributes of the RIGHT employees are, then segment, target, and position employee groups and offerings to attract and engage the RIGHT employees and individuals. All of these happen before and after hiring. Simply said, return-driven firms apply such a great marketing methodology to the recruiting and hiring side of their businesses as well. Matching the Offering to the Employee Paychex is a provider of human resources, payroll, and employee benefits outsourcing services for small-to-medium-sized businesses. At present, the company has over 100 offices serving around 740,000 payroll clients in the U.S. and Europe.
For over two decades, the firm has experienced incredibly high corporate returns and growth rates. In designing its payroll processing offering for small-to-medium sized businesses, the firm wanted to match up employees that could better fit with its target customers. So, for years, Paychex bypassed a focus on prominent business schools and sought to hire the highest-level candidates from community colleges. That employment strategy became part of the company’s culture. The firm’s employment offering—compensation, benefits, and lifestyle—was incredibly compelling to students from community colleges. This made Paychex one of the most sought-after firms by those targeted employee groups. The result of this strategy? Low employee turnover, higher job satisfaction, and higher cash flow returns! Had the company targeted the larger, “brand name” business schools for the needed roles, Paychex’s employment offering might not have been as differentiated and enviable. See why Professor Litman and Dr. Frigo relate marketing with human resources? The same strategies you employ to market your brand’s offerings to customers are also the same strategies you employ to market your brand itself to future members of your workforce To do this, you have to be creative and know how to segment, target, and position your offering to the RIGHT groups of people—those who will truly appreciate what you offer them and see it as their only or most viable “option.” Career Driven Strategy It’s no surprise that employees do what they are paid to do, but these payments are much more than monetary compensation. That’s why according to Professor Litman and Dr. Frigo, once ideal employee segments have been identified, return-driven businesses should consider the following:
The above questions apply a Return Driven Strategy pyramid to the individual’s career, also known as Career Driven Strategy (CDS). In this framework, each employee perceives an individual set of personal needs and an idea of “wealth,” which differs from person to person. Through innovation, reputation-building, and delivery of their individual service offering as employees (their own personal competency tenets), they fulfill the needs of their customer (their employer). The more an employer needs a particular employee’s offering and the more unique that offering is, the higher the compensation. This understanding allows a firm to shape its employment offering in ways that fit how employees define wealth, particularly in ways beyond compensation. — In recent years, mass customization has labeled the efforts of firms to design products and services that are incredibly individualized for customers, but in ways that require low resources of the business. This same concept can be applied to employees! When possible, employers can individualize the employment offering, while still gaining the services, efforts, and overall culture required to achieve the higher tenets. According to Professor Litman and Dr. Frigo, allowing individuals to customize their benefits package is a step in the right direction, but one might consider a more comprehensive framework for understanding what motivates the employee. Keep these details in mind as you apply the concepts of RDS’ Tenet 9 to your firm! If you’re looking to gain a better understanding of Return Driven Strategy and Career Driven Strategy, we highly recommend checking out “Driven” by Professor Litman and Dr. Frigo. Click here to get your copy and learn how this framework can help you in your business strategies and ultimately, in ethically maximizing wealth for your firm. Hope you found this week’s insights interesting and helpful. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc., once said: "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." Learn more about Apple’s success as seen through the lens of RDS’ tenet 5 in next week’s article! |
