In your opinion, what is the most important role HR managers play?

  Shell’s Top Recruiter Takes His Cues from Marketing

When Navjot Singh joined Royal Dutch Shell in the early 2000s, the company was facing an extraordinary challenge: The rate at which Shell’s engineers were retiring meant the global firm needed to more than triple the number of new recruits it hired, which was about 2,500, to nearly 8,000. Yet at the time, Shell was not considered an employer of choice. The global oil and gas company needed to project a new image—fast. Says Singh, “In the same way marketers know they need to advertise to be a market leader, HR had to know do employer brand. Marketing is the only way to ensure customers buy products. It was also the only way to ensure Shell got the best people coming to us first.”

“Wait! Why would Shell’s HR guy be talking about marketing?” you might be wondering. As both an HR and marketing expert, Singh saw a powerful synergy between the two. “I’m 50 percent a marketer—the rest is HR, communications, and recruitment,” says Singh. Singh initially started out as VP of customer relationship management, but quickly joined the HR team when he recognized Shell’s emerging need for new talent and the immense potential for him to use classic marketing techniques to help the company achieve its objectives. His vision, skill sets, and experience were a perfect match for the company’s situation.

So in Singh’s mind, addressing the company’s need for new talent meant building a brand as an employer, which in turn meant creating a cohesive message. But Shell’s global recruiting approach was anything but cohesive. “At the time we had 1,200 recruitment systems, 35 recruitment companies, and 400 executive search companies working for us,” he recalls. “I attended a careers event at Cambridge University where there were three Shell stands beside each other—one from the UK, one from Malaysia, and another from Nigeria. This was a fragmented approach and tough for candidates to understand.” Shell needs do unified outreach program if it was going to meet its need for numbers while fulfilling its desire for a global talent pool. The company recruits from among 90 different nationalities each year because it recognizes the benefits of cultural diversity.

“It’s not enough to tell candidates why they should join Shell. We needed to demonstrate such reasons through the interviewing process and the whole candidate experience,” explains Singh. “A motivating candidate experience—from the moment someone hears about Shell to the moment they have joined us—requires a coordinated approach across all the recruitment disciplines: marketing, operations, recruiters and line managers all need to work together.” It also necessitated personnel take less of a more Shell-concentric perspective to one that focused on candidates.

Singh and his team set about applying various marketing techniques to the recruitment process, which have since resulted in an 80 percent cut in recruitment costs, a 20 percent reduction in the time to hire new staff, and a very real claim to being the top employer in its market segment. In fact, Shell has won more than 75 awards for its unique HR strategy.

Singh believes Shell is typical of many firms, noting, “In the future, companies will have to a pply for skilled people to work for them rather than candidates applying to work at an organization. HR must still realize the strategic value it can bring.”

1. What functions of HRM are similar to marketing functions? How can thinking about “marketing” a company’s jobs improve the strategic focus of human resources personnel?

2. If you were planning to use marketing strategies to “brand” a company as an employer of choice, what are some of the factors you would consider?

3. Do you agree with Singh’s statement that in the future, companies will have to apply for skilled people to work for them rather than candidates applying to work at an organization? Why or why not?

Chapter 2

Traditional vs. Strategic HRM

Traditional views of HR roles are more restrictive and tend to rely on the HR function in more of a personnel approach. However, strategic HR policies and practices can be critical to organization success and even survival. Strategic HR policies and practices are focused on HR’s role as a strategic partner, change agent; administrative expert and employee champion . HR managers must appreciate that a strategic approach can provide three critical outcomes: increased performance; enhanced customer service and employee satisfaction; and enhanced shareholder value. These outcomes are accomplished through effective management of the staffing, retention and turnover processes through selection of employees that fit the strategy and culture of the organization; cost effective utilization of investment in identified human capital with the potential for high returns; integrated HR programs and policies that clearly follow corporate strategy; facilitation of change and adaptation; and tighter focus on customer needs, key and emerging markets and quality.

What is HR’s role as a change agent?

Environmental Analysis

The environmental analysis is the second step of the strategic planning process. It is important that an organization be in touch with the competition, regulations, technology, market trends and economic trends. Understanding the environment that surrounds organizational operations is critical to developing strategies that will help the company achieve its mission, vision and goals. If the company does not know what is going on around it there is little chance that it can continue to operate competitively for the long run. The focus of this course is developing a human resource management strategic plan that is geared towards the people that will be needed to achieve the overall operational objectives. This drills down to a specific company asset and strategies needed to plan effectively in the areas noted from the strength of manpower.

The environmental analysis covers internal and external factors and covers all organization stakeholders

Human Resources Planning

Identify the three key elements of the human resources planning model and discuss the relationships among them.

Learning Outcome

Explain how human resources planning and a firm’s mission, vision, and values are integrally linked to its strategy.